Monica dropped everything for love of Lamu

Monica, a fashion buyer in Holland, came to Lamu in 1997 as a backpacker and fell in love with the island. She then met a man called Banana (Mohamed Ali Mbarak) and fell in love with him too. She never left. Instead, they started a small bed and breakfast on top of her in-law’s house; Banana cooked and she hosted.

Children came, two of them. After a few years, they bought a plot in a quiet corner of Shela, close to the waterfront and started the famous Banana House, a private wellness guesthouse known for its tranquility, a place to go have a conversation with your chakra.

Being a yogi, Monica started the Lamu Yoga Festival, for people who seek peace, stillness and balance. The third four-day Yoga Festival is due between 2nd to 6th of March in Shela. I sat down with her for this interview during my recent visit to Lamu.

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I’m fascinated at how people visit a place and just decide to leave everything behind and settle there. Did you land here in Lamu and say, this is it or did it grow on you?

I had been travelling all over for over a year and when I came here, I knew straight away. When I came here I felt at home. I knew this was where I wanted to live. Of course, I went back to the Netherlands a few times to prepare for my settling here.

Had you heard of Lamu before?

My sister, a doctor, who lived in Kenya at that time had told me about it and I also think I read about it in an inflight magazine.

So you just walked away from your job and life in the Netherlands, was it the end of some sort of internal struggle, maybe?

So this one Christmas I came to visit my sister for Christmas holidays and we went to the Masai Mara with three Maasais in the back and the lovely grassy plains. I remember we had to make our own pizza; we went to the market, bought some meat and tomatoes and it was fantastic, the best and simplest Christmas ever and it made me wonder about life.

I didn’t want to go back to Holland, I didn’t want to go back to my job. I was a commercial fashion buyer, I designed my own collections but I also bought famous brand names, fashion labels. We had a big warehouse in Holland, and I designed for other warehouses. My job was about knowing what people liked and buying them.

I remember how clients always sought for and wore black things. Black was very fashionable then. I was selling things for people to look good on the outside, and people were buying the latest things to cover what was lacking on the inside and I felt in conflict with that and with what I felt inside.

I like that….

Our body is the greatest guide in our lives, but we have not learnt to listen to our bodies. We only listen to our bodies when we have a headache or are not feeling well. But we should actually realise what to do before we get a headache. Mediation is the most important thing in life.

We say yoga and many times we just think of the physical aspects of yoga, just a fit body. But really yoga has other aspects. It’s a healthy way of living. Meditation is actually the base for anything we do. You cannot switch off your mind. So through meditation, you can learn, then out of nothing new things can come, creativity can come.

I got so much from Lamu island that I wanted to give back. Yoga has always had my interest and when I travelled for one and a half years, I did intense courses, I did a 10-day personal mediation in India. I did yoga studies and when I came here, I felt ‘this is the place yoga would be really beautiful.”

So when you were starting Banana House, did you know that it was going to be a place where you would teach yoga?

No, I didn’t know. I had no plans at all in my life. I followed my heart, and when I came here, I fell in love with my man. I gave him some money to build this guest house and everybody said ‘oh you’re crazy. You will lose your money…’ I said ‘no, it’s only money.’ I’ve just always followed my heart.

So I never really expected that it would be so big, yet I had a feeling that Lamu was the perfect place for well-being and wellness. So we’ve seen over the years that yoga is becoming more and more popular worldwide.

I believe in America more than 20 million people already practice yoga. We see it in Europe and we are starting to see it in Africa as well as a continent, and in Kenya, it’s in Nairobi that it’s growing rapidly…and that’s very inspiring.

How has the previous yoga festivals been?

The first Lamu yoga festival was in 2014. So this will be the third festival and the response is big already. Now we are getting some international people.

We are getting international teachers, we have requests from America, India, Dubai. So we can see, that now people start to discover yoga in Lamu. And I’ve always said, why should you travel to India, to Bali, or to Thailand whereas Lamu has its beauty in itself? It’s only a one-hour flight from Nairobi.

How has yoga impacted your life?

It has added beauty to my life. Through the skills of labour, you start to learn yourself better and you start to learn your environment and it improves relations and it improves communication.

That’s beside the physical aspects of your body. I feel fit, you know…I’m okay. So that is positive, but it goes on a much deeper level. It really brings me prosperity.

How often do you go back to the Netherlands?

Well, in the last couple of years I’ve been holding back quite a lot because I have one child who has a lot of medical problems. So he had to be seen often by his doctor.
He had a heart operation, he had a brain operation too, so I had to go back to Holland, but that’s in the last couple of years.

What’s your biggest fear?

My biggest fear, probably is that something will happen with my children. I think that’s my biggest fear. I think that’s natural for a mother. But I don’t like to live in fear. It’s interesting that you asked the question.

I have a son who has heavy epileptic fits, so he can just fall anywhere. I could put him in a helmet, in the house, and I could not let him out at all because of fear of him hurting himself. But I let him go, and he explores. And yes, sometime he falls down. And sometimes things can happen, but I’m not saying that I will challenge fate. I have faith. So this is the opposite of fear for me. And fear has its function.

How do you define happiness?

Happiness is here at this moment.

It’s a moment?

It’s a moment. You know, happiness is being able to see. Happiness is not something in the future. We always think ‘I will be happy if I have a job.’ ‘I will be happy if I have my children…a house, a car.” We are always trying to postpone it and yet it’s right there with us all the time, only we don’t realise it.

What did your friends back in the Netherlands think when they heard that Monica decided to remain in Africa, married a local man, built a small little lodge?

I have a lot of friends who come and they are like “whoa! It’s not a small little lodge, it’s like a big place.” (Laughs) A lot of people admire what I’ve done, because I’ve followed my dreams.

My friends wonder how I do it. It’s not easy being married to a Swahili man, it’s not easy as a white woman living in this community, a Muslim community. It’s not easy setting up your own business, and having a child with a lot of medical problems – but I manage because I have the tools.

What’s the most challenging thing about being a white woman married to a Muslim man?

No, that is too general. It is him. It is just one person - Banana. I realised that it doesn’t matter if you’re married to a Swahili man, a Dutch man, marriage is not easy.

It’s a challenge. But if you’re open for the challenge, if you’re willing to learn from each other and from yourself, then it becomes beautiful. I realised that I face the same challenges as my married friends in Europe.

Did you have to convert to Islam?

No, I’m not a Muslim. There is no need for me to become a Muslim. Why should I become a Muslim? I’m a Christian, I’m baptized, I’m a Christian.

What’s the one thing you are very proud of in your life?

It has to be who I am.

How old are you now, Monica?

(Laughs) What do you think? You can never ask a woman how old she is…(Pause) I’ve just turned 50.

Well, you look lovely!

(Laughs) Thank you! It’s the Yoga!!