TUDES ET ESSAIS Patricia Romero Curtin Weddings in Lamu Kenya An Example of Social and Economie Change Please your husband all the day you live with him Mwana advice to her daughter Lamu 18503 Lamu is on the northern Kenya coast on an island bearing the same name Throughout the 20th century the town population has remained at be tween 5000-7000 although there was decrease of perhaps 1500 people during the height of the depression in the 1930s The periods covered in this paper are the early icsos when the population was relatively stable the early 1950s when many middle-aged informants were married and in the early igSos when was undertaking fieldwork and was therefore participant-observer of the recent weddings under discussion While much of this paper is concerned with analyzing class behavior and the interrelationships between various classes of women in Lamu it is also in some respects concerned with family history Family and class are closely linked as this paper demonstrates.1 brief and somewhat superfluous sketch of the groups living in Lamu town and the surrounding small farms shamba) in the 20th century is necessary to place in per spective those families under discussion First there were the old Afro- Arab families mixture of the progeny of the merchants and later settlers and African women There were still African slaves who inter married with each other and among the women with their owners few Ba un an ethnic group of Afro-Arab ancestry from nearby islands and the representatives of the ruling class Arabs from Zanzibar and the

Cahiers tudes africaines 94 XX V-2 1984 pp ly