An island trading town on the Swahili coast, one busy afternoon. About seventy people at work, fourteen small stories, and one porter running late.
Play Kilwa Plays in your browser. The first visit downloads about 30 MB of painting, so Wi-Fi helps.
Twenty places we could paint after Kilwa, each with its own palette and light. Tell us which one you’d play, or suggest somewhere we missed.
Every place here is a suggestion; nothing is scheduled. The people in every map are invented. The places, the work and the things in them come from archaeology and written sources, and each map says which is which.
New afternoons go up when they are painted, usually with a long note about how they were made. Follow along on Substack, or find me as @deonnahodges:
Every afternoon here is imagined. The people are invented; the towns, the boats, the food and the work are reconstructed from archaeology and written sources, and each story in the game says which is which.
The town is painted over its own code-drawn layout, and the people are drawn in ink and wash, so what you meet on the beach is the game itself.
Music in the game comes from Hugh Tracey’s 1950 recordings of the Swahili coast, courtesy of the International Library of African Music, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. No music survives from 1350, and this page plays none. Thereabouts is free and non-commercial.
