Wasini Island

Before 1963, in the British colonial time, there was an airstrip in the lagoon situated longitudinally south on the island; only small pieces of tarmac now remain.

The high poverty level has greatly diminished in the last 30 years due to the tourism based on the approximately 10 km far Kisite-Mpunguti Marine National Park.

Here tourists snorkel and dive between the coral around this tiny sand island Kisite which is totally inundated during high tide.

The tourist numbers generated in the area over the years are not monitored for environmental or socio economic impact.

The fisherman are using open baskets put under water with stones and demarcated by mangrove poles hewn on the island and taken into their canoes, or are throwing fishing lines.

diagonal across the channel between the island and the mainland which contains the northward bound East-African current of the Indian Ocean coming from Cape Delgado in the north of Mozambique near the border with Tanzania.

Port immigration and customs facilities are present and provide services for those trade dhows and people arriving from Tanzania, especially the island Pemba, or further afield.

Twice a week there is a passenger transport service by boat to Weyte at Pemba; also it is possible to board a cargo dhow for payment to that harbour.

The Wasini Women Group has established a nature boardwalk in the beautiful coral gardens on the Western end.

south of the equator in the Indian Ocean and is every year blasted by the vigour of the northeast monsoon Kaskazi, which brings the long rains.

However, the longer the distance between the latrinepit and the sea, the more micro-organisms take the chance to clean the passing raw sewage material.

So people are giving their edible garbage to the goats, putting the remains in a compostpit and burn the non-biodegradable left overs.

However, at the coast some people tend to dispose the non-biodegradable remains directly in the sea, resulting in floatsam - mainly items of plastic and rubber, but also big derooted wooden trunks and their branches- at the lower end with high tide.

The inland lagoon near Nyuma Maji in the southern half of the island and the mangrove forests marshes entrap large quantities of flotsam floating in on the tides.

On the sandy mudflats in the west grows Shoreline Seaside Purslane, in Swahili called mboga pwani, "the vegetable of the ebb", with its official botanical name Sesuvium portulacastrum (See note 2).

The main diseases of the children are malaria, respiratory and gastrointestinal infections, while many adults suffer from diabetes mellitus, high blood pressure and gastric ulcer.

For more complicated diseases and sophisticated medical care the inhabitants visit the private and state clinics at the mainland in Shimoni, Msambweni and Mombasa.