Malindi

Our trip through the Red Sea and the Western Indian Ocean went fairly well with little trouble. However, my hands condition was rapidly deteriorating. A doctor on board told me that If I continued using it I might not be able to use it ever again or worse, it might need to be amputated. He said giving it rest and leaving it alone would help it heal quickly. Therefore this journal entry shall be my last until it heals or I learn how to write left handed. Malindi is a fairly well known city, however I would have rather gone to Zanzibar because I love islands. Malindi has some of the best goods though, straight from the East African interior. I heard that the cities have been settled by Arabs and the locals are all Muslim. This was true. The city was full of mosques. Ibn Battuta said, "The rulers, scholars, officials, and big merchants as well as the port workers, farmers, craftsmen, and slaves, were dark-skinned people speaking African tongues in everyday life." We were impressed with the city and we bought ivory, quartz, and leopard skins for a reasonable price while we were there. We plan to take them with us to Calicut. The ivory is from elephants and the leopard skins took great warriors to get. The warriors had to kill the leopards without getting killed themselves. I just hope they were worth the risk that these people took to get them. We even saw a giraffe while we were there. It was a gift from Malindi to the emperor of China. Near the giraffe, we met a Chinese man, Shen Tu, who was drawing and writing about the giraffe. He wrote, "In a corner of the western seas, in the stagnant waters of a great morass, Truly was produced a qilin, whose shape was as high as fifteen feet, With the body of a deer and the tail of an ox, and a fleshy, boneless horn, With luminous spots like a red cloud or purple mist. Its hoofs do not tread beings and in its wanderings it carefully selects its ground, It walks in stately fashion and in its every motion it observes a rhythm, Its harmonious voice sounds like a bell or a musical tube. Gentle is this animal, that in all antiquity has been seen but once, the manifestation of its divine spirit rises up to heaven's abode." His writings were based on Chinese folklore and didn't make too much sense to me. Anyways we are soon leaving and I shall give my pen to Mark, so he can take my job as our scribe. I hope he does a good job.