Something that helped my understanding of Diani evolve was looking at the trees. Perhaps that sounds odd. But what better way to start reading a place than to look for its “original” self, as it were. And sometimes this self is found in the landscape.
Look around the edges of a place and you will start to get a sense of what things were. The “place” being a concept that can extend as we accommodate more of its many facets into our understanding of it. My concept of Diani was this: a stretch of beautiful hotels that open out onto white sands and tanzanite waters. While that is it’s current identity as a centre of tourist activity, I can now see its spirit in the areas that extend beyond the invisible borders I drew around the commercial areas of it in my mind.
Ancient Baobab trees, visible in big groups on stretches undeveloped land.
For me, this broader understanding emerged in the shape of the Baobab tree. Hundreds if not thousands of years old, they grow wilder and stronger the further away you get from the commercial areas. The obvious fact that these trees have existed before the tourism industry gave this town the identity we are familiar with today hit me.
The newer palm trees. Unlike the coconut palms that grow here all over, these ones have been planted for aesthetic reasons.
I now look at the palm trees here that remind me of California differently. Instead of thinking of them as natural residents of this town, I now see them as young trees brought in from elsewhere to give visitors a vibrant, friendly, iconically beachy welcome. Part of the staff, you could say.
In the meeting of indigenous and non-indigenous trees you can get a sense of what a place was in its wilderness, and what it is reaching for.
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