From the Musafir website:
Musafir means traveller. It is a word that can be found in many languages, like Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, Kiswahili and Urdu. In Romanian and Turkish it translates into ´guest´.
The Musafir Project aims to create a platform for the message of peace, freedom and unity. The ship will serve as a creative space that allows all those aboard to explore, to embrace random encounters and test personal limits, to mature, to inspire and feel inspired, to share, to create and ultimately to learn about the world. Musafir is more than just a boat, it’s a way of life.
The dhow is a traditional wooden sailing boat with lateen sail used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Traditionally dhows were used for trading goods and fishing activities in East Africa and India, as well as pearl diving in the Middle East. Even today dhows are still used in many countries around the world, mostly between the Persian Gulf and East Africa.
The building of dhows is considered an art handed down from generation to generation. With the introduction of more modern boat building techniques and designs, we are losing the practice of dhow building. It is becoming more and more a lost art.
The Musafir, a 70-foot dhow still under construction in Kenya today, honours the traditional boat building skills of this region, while creating a tool that gives the Musafiri community an opportunity to continue travelling and be at the service of others at the same time.
