The island stubbornly cultivates the story of a Chinese navigator who, in the 15th century, landed and settled among the islanders. Beijing quickly detected the geopolitical interest of this story, which it links to its new silk roads. While some African countries, including Kenya, distance themselves from it, Zheng He’s story on Pate Island also gives China the historical depth it lacks in Africa.
Nestled in the heart of a maze of narrow lanes in the village of Siyu on Pate Island, Mama Baraka’s house looks shabby, with its cracked adobe walls and dimly lit rooms veiled in mosquito nets. But this typical house on Pate, a tiny island off the Kenyan coast, houses an object that attracts curious people from abroad: a unique porcelain bowl, which Mama’s family has passed down for centuries, an artifact which, she says, proves that her ancestors came from China by boat hundreds of years ago.
“We have kept this bowl as a family heirloom for generations, says 75-year-old Mama. When I was little, my grandparents told me that our family was partly Chinese and that we should never forget our origins.
Zheng He, Chinese Marco Polo
If China continues to extend its influence in Africa by multiplying infrastructure projects, the country is aware of the absence of cultural ties with the continent. Which could change thanks to Mama’s house, on this islet in the Indian Ocean, just a few kilometers from the port of Lamu, built by the Chinese.
“My mother was called Safina, ‘boat’, in Arabic, says Mama, sitting under the eaves of her house, seeking a bit of coolness in the searing heat. Because my grandmother wanted her to remember her roots: her ancestor had come to Pate by boat from distant China.”
Historians agree in recognizing that between 1405 and 1433 the Chinese explorer Zheng He undertook seven voyages at sea and visited more than thirty countries. And that he would have returned to China with“countless treasures with unknown names”, according to a story. Fielding more than 26,000 sailors aboard more than 300 vessels – the largest of which was over 124 meters in length, and 63 of which were intended to transport treasure – the fleet under his command remained the most powerful ever seen in the world. until the First World War. (That of Christopher Columbus, at the end of the 15the century, had three ships, the largest of which, the Santa Maria, was 36 meters long.)
According to Mao Kun’s map, also known as Zheng He’s navigation map and which is the oldest nautical atlas, the explorer’s fifth, sixth and seventh expeditions led the fleet to cross the Strait of Malacca. , skirt the southern tip of the Indian peninsula and approach the Swahili Coast to descend as far south as present-day Mozambique. Cities like Mombasa, Kenya’s oldest port, were on the map.
A local legend reports that one of Zheng’s ships was swept away by a storm off the island of Pate, where it struck a reef before sinking in the Indian Ocean. The shipwreck would have taken place between 1417 and 1433, the only period during which, according to most specialists, Zheng and his sailors would have reached the eastern coast of Africa.
Mama’s eyes light up when she talks about the lost sailors washed up by the waves in Shanga: “This is where our family story begins.”
“Print the legend”
The story only made headlines in China in 2003, when Li Xinfeng, correspondent for the People’s Daily, traveled to Pate and brought the legend back to the Chinese public. This was quick to arouse the interest of the Chinese. The national channel CCTV, the China Daily and the official Xinhua news agency have all come in turn, in search of a link between China and Kenya much older than the railway built by Beijing between Nairobi and Mombasa (whose terminus is adorned with a bust of Zheng He, accompanied by the inscription: “Zheng’s fleet has made four visits to Mombasa, consolidating mutual understanding and enhancing friendly exchanges between China and Kenya.”).
They were probably also there to unearth an old link, a bit of soft power capable of transforming Africa into one of the main objectives of the New Silk Roads, a project launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013. China has invested gigantic sums in the continent to develop its infrastructure, from Tanzania-Zambia railway at Entebbe International Airport.
On the sea, Beijing introduced the Maritime Silk Road to