Taken from: Swahili Origins: Swahili Culture & the Shungwaya Phenomenon by James De Vere Allen.

The ruined-site on the Lower Juba near Deshek Wama. The notes of the nineteenth-century missionary Wakefield who visited this place (which he knew as Keethi or Kyrthie and which Elliot, the British administrator in the 1920s, spelled Kedi) are said to have described it as having stone houses and seven gates and two- three days from the coast. It is beyond any reasonable doubt the place which is remembered in the Book of the Zinj as Shungwaya. It mentions that Deshek Wama and Shungwaya were the last places where the Kashur were able to hold out, but they had eventually to flee from the Gala. No modern account of this site exists, and we do not know when it was founded, through it was probably abandoned c. 1715. Deshek Wama is a fertile, shallow depression about sixteen miles long by two miles wide, which was irrigated from Lac Dera and also through a permanent channel from the Juba. It used to be a dry-season grazing ground and was also used by cultivators.

Taken from: Thomas H. Wilson; SITES AND SETTLEMENT PATTERNS OF COASTAL JUBALAND, SOUTHERN SOMALIA

The Juba River is navigable for a great distance, although sandbars at the mouth complicate entrance from the sea. No sites have come to light around the river's mouth, perhaps because Kismayu, on a bay 16 km to the south, then as now functioned as the Juba port by providing the shelter (save port) the mouth lacks.

Old Kismayu stands as the northernmost site in coastal Juba- land, located on and behind the headland known as Cape Bissell to the east of Kismayu town. The high rocky coral headland of the cape joins the mainland by a neck of low-lying sand dunes. On the heights of the cape Revoil visited a ruined mosque and tombs as well as "vestiges of the ancient habitations" (1888:395). At the time of Elliot's visit the mosque had been dismantled and the stones of the walls and kiblah removed to Kismayu (1926 159-163). Near the interface between the coral promontory and the dunes Elliott found a cemetery exposed by erosion in the sandy cliff face at a depth of about 1.5 - 2 m below the surface. He saw human bones/ ceramics, cannonballs, and beads of carnelian, turquoise (?), glass, bone, and ivory. He traced an apparent water duct by digging, and reported (house ?) walls nearby and a possible landing place of masonry. His ceramic collection appears to include celadons, white and blue and white porcelains, Islamic monochromes, and stone wares. As a group these suggest the I5th and I6th century period, if the ascriptions are correct. The apparent depth of the deposit and variety of artifacts at Old Kismayu suggest that the location would repay archaeological investigation. It may well be the site of old Juba. …….. The only mention of ruins on Kismayu Island is by Grottanelli (I955a p76), who wrote of ruins "on the small island now uninhabited that closes (Kismayu Bay) at the north."

……… the Juba mouth with no site yet discovered near the only major river of southern Somalia and with no large sites around the only feature that can be called a bay in the entire region. One might expect sites near the river mouth, given the fertility of the Juba valley and the opportunity for navigation upon the river in spite of the sandbar at the mouth. Old sites could have been destroyed by fluvial or marine action or concealed by dunes; alternatively, the course of the river might have shifted, creating a new mouth. Perhaps Old Kismayu, offering the shelter the mouth of the river lacks, functioned as the port for the river, with much of the old site cannibalized for construction in the present town.