Some Swahili buildings for the East coast of Africa

Having built an Arab-Swahili army, a Regular Zanzibar army and having the miniatures to build a British Naval Brigade and the German Wissmanntruppe in my lead pile. I thought it might be nice to have a small Swahili stone town to fight over this (hopefully) is the first of several building bases that can be combined into a small town Ideally I want a couple of bases of residential buildings, a Swahili style mosque (no minarets on traditional Swahili mosques), a quay side and customs house, a market place and a Governors/Royal Palace. Swahili stone towns were dotted all along the African east coast from Somalia to Mozambique and as the name suggests we’re normally built of coral rock some being built as early as the 12th century. Being one end of the Indian ocean trade routes these towns were pretty cosmopolitan places attracting East Africans, Omanis, Somalis, Indians, Portuguese from Goa and of course later Europeans. Swahili architecture borrowed ideas from around the Indian ocean and middle east and combined it with traditional African ideas.

For these first residential buildings I used use the Perry/Renedra 28mm plastic Afghan houses as a base. I then converted them using plastic sheet, plastic rod, flannel (for the thatch) and balsa wood to make them look more Swahili. I added a couple of cheap plastic palm trees from Amazon for a bit of colour. Below are a few pictures of Swahili architecture for reference and then my first buildings