Source: All Africa/The Nation
http://allafrica.com/stories/200704140130.html
Last Sunday, Muslims celebrated Maulidi - the birth of Prophet Mohammed - with a procession along Mombasa's main streets. The same day, Catholics marked Easter Sunday - the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Commemorating the two events in such a public and peaceful manner shows the town's cosmopolitanism, its main strength.
Mombasa and, indeed, the whole of the coast region have in the past hosted many and diverse civilisations, giving it one of the most complex demographic profiles in the world.
From the Phoenicians, the Chinese, the Ottoman Turks, the Arabs and the Portuguese to the English and latter-day European and African migrations, the Coast is truly a melting pot of cultures.
Among the indigenous communities there are records of the Galla, who occupied vast areas even as the Shungwaya were finding their footing in the area.