A week in the Union of the Comoros

Here I am back in Nairobi in transit to Zanzibar. As promised here is the blog from the last week spent on the islands of Grand Comoros and Moheli. It is a long one so you will be forgiven for just looking at the photos.

Saturday, 05 March 2011 

At least this morning I could sleep until a more reasonable hour – 5am. This is my usual wake up time so was no hardship. I got up and packed all my things away, showered, checked out of the hotel and was ready to go to the airport. My taxi driver was early too so we left. Jomo Kenyatta airport was chaos. There was a heck of a lot of people there, more than I have ever seen before. Luckily I had checked into my flight online so just had to drop off my suitcase and this was the shortest queue. It still took an hour to get to the front though. Once through that and immigration it was just the normal hang about and wait. I was a bit confused though because I couldn’t get find Moroni on the departures board. I did find my flight number and it said the flight was going to Dzoudzi (their spelling mistake). I had never heard of the place so I did a quick internet search and discovered that it was on Mayotte – the French claimed island.

We left on time and stopped at Dzauodzi to drop off passengers, pick up some other passengers and get some fuel before taking off for the 35 minute hop across to Moroni. Although the pilot had warned of turbulence on the crossing, there was none and it was a nice short flight bar one thing. Sitting next to me was a woman and her toddler (a boy) and across the aisle her husband and a second toddler (a little girl). These people had brought no entertainment for their children on the 4 hour flight. The little girl slept all the way thank goodness but the little boy became restless and bored very quickly and set to bawling for the last 3 hours of the time on the plane. Mother could not have cared less. She neither spoke to him nor tried to entertain him. The father tried a little to placate the child but that usually involved pulling the child onto his lap at the times when the seat belt lights were on. Then the air hostess came and told him to put the child back in his own seat. Through all this the mother did nothing! Usually I have a lot of sympathy for parents who struggle to stop their kids from crying on planes but normally I can see how much the parent/s is trying to get the child settled. The irksome thing about this lot is that for most of the time they just did nothing. 

Arriving at the Moroni airport

Eventually we touched down in Moroni and I cleared immigration quickly but was told to get a visa. I got into the visa queue which was dreadfully slow. While I was standing there I saw Fatouma waiting for me and she gave me a copy of a letter from the Vice-President of the Comoros instructing immigration to grant me a visa as I am here on official government business. This didn’t speed up the process though because I still had to wait in the queue but once I was at the front things went quicker. I have however noticed that my passport number is missing a digit on the visa – I hope this won’t cause problems when I leave. 

Visa collected, I went and got my suitcase which was the last on the carousel and went outside with Fatima to the car. Here I met Kamardine Boinali’s wife and his brother. Kamardine is my Comoros partner for WIOFish. They took me on a quick little tour around Moroni and showed me some of the important places. I was then taken to the hotel. What can I say about the hotel that is nice ……. It is clean – that is about it. I have a bedroom; the bathroom is a shared affair. In the shared bathroom there is no running water. The toilet is flushed by pouring water from a bucket next to it. The shower is there in thought only. All the fixtures are there but the reality is that bathing is done in a basin of water that is left in the shower. Two nights here is going to be long. Oh yes and there is no electricity. I’m told it will come on tonight so we will see. Fortunately I have some biscuits and marshmallows in my suitcase so I won’t starve ha ha. 

The outside of my hotel

I switched on my cell phone at this point and discovered that Vodacom has no agreement with the local service providers so no cell phone signal! Mr Boinali had told me that one of the restaurants near the hotel had wireless internet connections so I went for a walk there to try and send a message home. Of course it was raining so I got a little drenched going there and once there was told that there server has not been working since yesterday. So here I am cut off from the rest of the world. I think that tomorrow I may try and get a local sim card. It is frustrating not having any contact at all.

The rain pouring down in Moroni

Mr Boinali said that he would try and come find me tomorrow to give me a tour around Grand Comoros. I hope he does because it will definitely help pass the time and it will be nice to see more than just Moroni. 

06 March 2011 

What a terrible night’s sleep. The bed is so soft that I was lying in a huge depression in it and I felt as if I was doing a bit of mountaineering to get out of it. The pillows on the other hand were very firm and about 40 cm think – impossible to sleep on so I folded up my jacket and used that as a pillow. Only problem with that was that it is a fleece jacket and it was hot. Then there were the mosquitoes! Clever little pests! They would wait for the Tabard to wear off and then attack with a vengeance so I kept waking up and putting more Tabard on. 

On the up side, the electricity was switched on at 16:30. I went and had a basin bath at about 6pm and sometime after that but before 11pm the water to the bathroom was turned on. Too late for me but at least the toilet could be flushed properly. At least with electricity I could make myself a soup snack. The hotel has a restaurant but the staff do not seem particularly enthusiastic about offering any services. 

This morning I got up early as I had a sneaking suspicion that the electricity and water would be switched off. I went and had a cold shower which I am definitely not complaining about as I was too happy to have an operating shower! I had a cup of coffee and at 7:30 the electricity went off. I went to wash my coffee cup and found, as I had suspected, that the water was off too. I’m so glad I was up early for the shower! 

I sat in the restaurant on a couch and did a bit of work on my laptop. The manager and his sidekick were around but I was not offered coffee, breakfast or anything else. The two of them had their breakfast in front of me though. I have to say that I definitely do not like this place and it is not surprising that I am the only guest here. I really hope that the bungalows where I am staying on Mohéli will be nicer. 

I went for a walk down to the ocean and walked along the waterfront just looking around. There are some amazingly nice looking places right next door to tin shacks. The people are friendly and down at the sea I didn’t feel harassed by anyone. This place could be really fantastic but for all the rubbish lying around. There is litter everywhere! I wondered back up to the market to do a little bit of work (ha ha). My boss had told me to go to the market to see what species of lobster is on sale and whether we can collect genetic samples from them. I found the meat and fish market by following the really bad smell of goat entrails! At first I tried to wander through the stalls looking for lobster but the smell was really overpowering and vomiting was high up on my list of things to do so I retreated out of that area but found a vantage point where I could see all the stalls and not have to smell them. There were plenty of tuna species on sale but not a single lobster or any other invertebrate. At this point the rain started to come down in bucket loads and I decided to beat a hasty retreat back to my hotel. On the way back I found a little shop that advertised it had Internet but on further enquiries, they had no electricity so nothing was happening. It is a really strange feeling to be cut off from my world. I’m so used to being able to sms or email from where ever I am and I don’t know when last I was in this situation. 

Passengers waiting for Air Madagascar to open

Moroni would be much nicer if all the litter was picked up

The market

Back at the hotel, I settled down with a book and spend a couple of hours quietly reading. At about 1:30pm the electricity came on again. The rain had eased to a mild drizzle so I went back to the shop with the internet to see if I could send a message home. The manager of the place did not realise the electricity was back as he was sitting outside chatting to everyone walking past. He went in though when I told he there was electricity again and switched all the computers on but there was still no Internet. It seems there is something wrong with the service provider. I hope it is not going to be like this on Mohéli as it will be tricky doing the work for my project. I have a paper backup plan but really want the participants to get a feel for the online database. 

While I was at the Internet place, the wind started to howl and the rain came back with a vengeance. I sat and waited for a while to see if it would abate but it looked set for the afternoon so I just dashed back to the hotel, which wasn’t far, and arrived back, to the amusement of the manager, looking like a drowned rat. So that was that, the rain bucketed down for the rest of the day and sight-seeing was out of the question. I finished the book I was reading and the watched videos that I downloaded off the Internet a while back but hadn’t got round to watching. 

07 March 2011 

This morning Fatima was at the hotel early to get me ready for the trip to the airport and Mohéli. We hang about and chatted in my very broken French about our families and work. I know I was making a mess of it but she understood what I was saying which really made me happy. Slowly, one by one the men arrived and we went off to the airport. It was a very relaxed check in and security check. Our plane, a little twin prop 18 seater arrived just before 11am and it wasn’t long before takeoff. The pilots were two Russian blokes and there was no safety briefing and no instructions what so ever before we left. They both just turned around and looked as us possibly to make sure we were all seated and then started up the engines. 

What a pleasure flying over Grand Comoros and then along the coast of Mohéli. To go back to Grand Comoros for a moment, it has an active volcano in the middle of the island and it was interesting to see the previous eruption scars on the landscape and even more amazing to see that people had built their houses on them. I also thought it was exceptionally pretty the way the black volcanic rock met the most beautiful blue ocean. 

The coast of Grand Comoros

First view of Mohéli

Fomboni, Mohéli's capital, from the air

We landed on Mohéli and the first thing before being let out the airport was to take a mandatory malaria tablet. Mohéli is the only Comoros island that is free of malaria and since the other two are rife with malaria, everyone has to take the tablet on arrival. Taking it on an empty stomach, however, is not particularly clever and I felt somewhat queasy for the afternoon. 

I got outside eventually and got the most amazing greeting. I had two jasmine leis placed around my neck and the Director of the Mohéli Fisheries Department was there to make sure I arrived safely and that everything was okay. 

Before heading off to the venue for the WIOFish workshop we went in search of pure alcohol at the hospital in Fomboni (the capital of Mohéli). The hospital did not have any though so we have arranged for someone who is coming from Grand Comoros tomorrow to bring some along. It seems crazy that the hospital has no alcohol. Before anyone gets any ideas, the alcohol is not to drink. I have been tasked, in addition to doing my own project work, with teaching the people from Comoros how to take genetic samples of lobsters. I had to bring all the necessary equipment along but drew the line at sneaking the alcohol in my suitcase since it is against airline policy to carry such substances. Anyway if we get the alcohol tomorrow, we will do the sampling on Wednesday. 

The place we are having the workshop is at the Mohéli Marine Park on the south of the island. It is only 33km from Fomboni but took us about two hours to get here because the road was so bad and because the rain bucketed down again. We were 6 in the front of the double cab and two guys were in the back plus there were all sorts of computers, printers and baggage in the back. When it started to rain we somehow managed to squeeze everything into the front except the poor guys on the back who got a solid soaking. 

We still stopped every now and again to look at the view

I was dropped off at my hotel which is infinitely better than the one in Maroni. I have a bungalow that fronts onto the beach. It has running water and electricity at night! After 30 minutes I was collected again and we all gathered for the secretary general of the fisheries department to officially open the workshop. We had the usual round of introductions and for the first time I introduced myself and told everyone where I work in French. No one fell about laughing so I think I did okay. After the opening I gave a brief introduction on WIOFish and then we decided how the work would progress over the next few days. There was a bit of haggling with Kamardine over when per diems should be paid and he sorted everything out.

My bungalow at the Moheli Laka Lodge

I begged and pleaded to borrow an internet connection to send off a couple of emails. After figuring out the French keyboard, I managed to get one email off and when I hit the send button on the second one I was told there was no longer a connection. SO FRUSTRATING! I’m hoping I can get a few minutes tomorrow morning to resend the second email. 

The women at the marine park are celebrating something or other to do with woman. I’m not sure what it is but I have been invited to attend and will do so tomorrow evening after work. I might as well get involved with everything while I am here. 

After we wrapped up the day at work Kamardine asked me if I wanted to go to a village to drop off the secretary general. There was nothing else to do so of course I agreed. On the way we started discussing lemurs because I vaguely remembered someone telling me there were lemurs on Comoros. There are indeed lemurs on Mohéli and I was promptly taken off to see them. At that particular village I was introduced to a Mohéli cabinet minister and wasn’t too sure what was going on but he took me and another French woman we came across in the village off into the surrounding forest. This guy proceeded to call the lemurs and after about 5 minutes 4 lemurs appeared in the trees above us. We had to be careful because it seemed they were trying to poop on us but it was such an amazing experience to see them! The lemurs decided that we really didn’t have any food for them after about 15 minutes and they scampered back to the treetops.

Maki

We drove back to the village where we are staying in the dark – a hair-raising experience since the roads are so narrow and so encroached by the forest. The only amusing thing was seeing all the crabs on the road – great big monsters … okay maybe not so big but way bigger than mangrove crabs. 

Kamardine dropped me at the hotel and I waited around for dinner. I had put in my order early for fresh fish boiled in a coconut sauce served on rice. Wow it was delicious!!!! The fish just fell apart off the bones and the sauce was fantastic. 

Now I am back in my bungalow sitting on a bed that feels infinitely better than the last bed I slept on and listening to the waves washing gently onto the beach. And with that it is bed time! 

Good night everyone! 

08 March 2011

What a fantastic night’s sleep I had! The bed was nice and hard and the sound of the little waves washing on to the beach soothed me off to sleep quickly. Of course now that I have running water in the bathroom all the time, I’m going to complain about the cold water J It was pure torture getting in the shower this morning but it is necessary so I really should just shut up and take it, there are after all worse things that can happen. 

I went and had breakfast this morning: crepes with jam, a little fresh bread, lemonade and a banana. Oh yes and coffee. The problem with only being able to speak a little French is that I only partially understand what I am being offered! This morning I was offered coffee to which I said yes (of course) but then I was offered something else to do with the coffee so I just said yes (oui) and ended up getting a whole flask of coffee! 

I went back to my bungalow and then the rain started to pour down. Fortunately it eased a bit before Kamardine came to collect me so I didn’t get too wet when I went up to the reception area to meet him. The path way up to the Marine Park’s office is very steep and muddy and this morning became treacherous. I had no sooner finished telling one of the participants about my fear of landing in the mud when I went skating down the hill. Fortunately I skated right into him and he had sure footing so all the happened was that I got mud on one hand and I felt embarrassed. I’m very thankful that I didn’t end up nose down in the mud.

The path to the marine park's office where we met each day

We started the work day off by listing all the fisheries that are active in the Comoros – 22 in total. There was a problem with the electricity this morning so we ended up not being able to use the data projector but Kamardine had printed out a copy of the data capture template and I explained to mostly blank faces how the template was to be completed. After that I divided the participants into three groups and made sure that each group had a computer, scribe and an electronic version of the template. Then came a very trying time! I expected to have problems with the completion of the template but really didn’t anticipate the direction from which it came. Usually I have to explain terms like maximum sustainable yield and other such things but today the longest discussion was around how to include species that contribute more than 5% of the total catch. This really astounded me! I ended up having to draw pictures to resolve the issue. By lunch each group had finished one fishery profile but they all then understood how it worked and in the afternoon were able to work much quicker. I am hoping that by tomorrow evening they will have completed all the profiles and we can spend Thursday reviewing them together as one whole group again. I think this will be possible but it does depend on how things go tomorrow.

The group

The view from the meeting room

In the middle of the day the electricity issue was resolved. It turns out that the marine park office gets its electricity from solar panels. There has, however, been no sunshine for over a week and the batteries that were providing the electricity in the sun’s absence had been depleted. Fortunately there is a backup set of batteries so we needed a technician to come by and change over the cables. I think it is fantastic that the marine park is so eco-friendly! 

Tonight I was supposed attend some women’s function in the village but am very happy that everyone forgot about it. I’m exhausted after spending the day concentrating so hard on what was being said! I’m very happy though that I can actually follow a lot of it. That is all from me tonight. The electricity has not been switched on here at the hotel so now I am trying to find the keys on the keyboard by the small amount of light a candle is giving off. 

Good night all! 

09 March 2011 

What a pleasant surprise to wake up and find the sun shining. I was extremely happy since a hot day would ensure that the clothes I had washed on Monday and Tuesday evenings would actually dry. By midday however I was over the heat. It was stiflingly hot in the meeting room and everyone was struggling with it. We managed to finish all the work by 4 pm and then Kamardine gave a presentation on the Mohéli Marine Park, when it was established, why and how good it has worked. It was very interesting for everyone. This is the only marine park in the Comoros and the people from the other islands where very interested in how it was working. 

After the presentation, we called it a day. The heat had sapped everyone’s energy. I couldn’t wait to get back to my bungalow and take a shower as I seemed to have spent the whole day drenched in sweat. After the shower I potted around for a bit and then went up to the lookout point to watch the sunset – my first in the Comoros. When I came back to my bungalow, I found the three workshop participants from Anjouan having a swim in the sea. They invited me to join them but I had to meet Kamardine.

We have decided to move from the village of Nioumachio to Fomboni tomorrow after work because if it is raining we might not be able to get to the airport for the flights out on Friday morning. So Kamardine and I met with the hotel manager to sort out payment for my stay here. He could not give me a receipt though so I will have to sort it out tomorrow when the boss is here. I have enjoyed staying here except for one small thing – my feet seem to be dirty ALL the time. There is so much mud around that no sooner have I washed my feet than they are dirty again. 

Tomorrow we will review all the fishery profiles and then the work here will be done. Since there has been no internet connection for most of the time here I will need to capture of the data into the database once I am in Tanzania next week. This is the reality of working in East Africa, technology is not always available but it is important to be able to come up with solutions to whatever shortcomings arise. 

Last days in the Comoros 

Thursday was a long day of working through each of the 22 fishery profiles. Eventually we ran out of time and the last four had to be a review of the shore sheets for each only. The workshop was brought to a close with speeches by representatives from each of the islands and me. I have really enjoyed the enthusiasm that most of this group brought to the workshop. It is disappointing that they were unable to see the database itself due to the lack of internet connectivity and for the most part we had to use a small monitor to display the data for everyone since the data projector drew too much electricity and ran the backup batteries flat all the time. I am hoping that next year I will be able to persuade Kamardine that the workshop needs to be held on one of the other islands. 

After the workshop was closed all the non-Mohéli participants (myself included) rushed back to our respective accommodations to collect our luggage and get ready for the trip to Fomboni. I went to settle my bill with the manager of the hotel. The cost of it should have been 33,000 francs but the idiot decided that he would try and fleece me. First of all he converted the francs to Euros, and then added a whopping great big “tourism” tax and the government tax. Finally he recalculated the amount back to francs and demanded 77,500 francs! In a mixture of English and broken French I told him exactly what I thought of him and his exchange rates and taxes. He apologised and said it would be okay if I just paid 35,000 francs. It really leaves a very bad taste in my mouth when the last impression I have of a place is of someone trying to rip me off. 

I went down to the gate and waited for Kamardine to collect me. He got there and told me that we would have to go looking for petrol first because the truck would not make it back to Fomboni with the little fuel that was in the tank. There is no petrol station in Nioumachio, people sell petrol from their houses so Kamardine went from house to house trying to find someone who had petrol for sale. The whole of the Comoros has had a petrol shortage since the Arab countries began their revolts. After an hour we were ready to go. It took two hours to get to Fomboni and when we arrived at the hostel that Kamardine had booked for us there was some problem with room availability but thankfully this was sorted out. I just had a quick shower (in ice cold water) and then went to bed.

My hut in Fomboni

The next morning, the two men and I who were staying at the hotel were presented with our bills. Mine was fine and was exactly what I had been told it would be but the bill for the men was almost double what they were expecting. They tried to sort it out with the owner but then gave up and waited for Kamardine to come so that he could sort it out. When he eventually got they a huge argument ensued but I wasn’t listening so have no idea what happened. Kamardine did, however, say that he was shocked at how these hotels keep on changing the price for a room. He then told me that there was a huge problem with the flight back to Moroni. I asked what the problem was thinking maybe I should look for a boat that I could catch a lift on but then he said the flight was delayed by two hours. I think my jaw actually dropped … what is such a big deal about two hours! He stopped at the airline offices and found someone there to explain to me in English that the plane would be late (not why it would be late). All this time Kamardine is shaking his head as if the world was about to end! Then he wanted to know what to do with us! So the decision came down to me and I decided that we would all wait at the airport. The others actually agreed because apparently these flights are so unreliable that they could also leave early when you have been told they will be late. So we were dropped off at the airport at 08:30 and eventually got on the plane at 14:45. I spent the time sitting on my suitcase reading a book and being harasses by the locals with all sorts of things. Mostly they were okay, just asking if I was okay and wanting to know where I was going (Moroni or Anjouan), some wanted me to take some things for them to Moroni which I refused and sent them to the Grand Comoros Director of Fisheries and he did actually accept some envelopes to take along. There was one guy who was not very nice at all and he was leaning all over me with this leering smirk on his face. I asked him what he wanted and he laughed out loud like a lunatic and said he wanted to talk English to me. I told him to go away but that just made him move closer! At that point the director stepped in and told him to get lost. We were so happy when our plane was finally there for us and we could leave, we had waited over 6 hours for a half hour flight! I felt terrible for the people returning to Anjouan though because the plane they were due to take had mechanical problems (in Anjouan) and they had no idea when they would get home. 

Eventually we arrived in Moroni and collected our baggage. Fatima took me to the hotel where I had stayed on arrival on Grand Comoros where I was supposed to have a booking for one night but we soon discovered that they had given the room away and had no more space. Quite frankly I was relieved! The best part of this story is that the receptionist was standing there telling us all this with only a towel draped around herself. So off we went with much muttering from Fatima and found another hotel. I was told to wait in the car and she would check it out. She came back and said it there was room for me and I should come and look. Sure it was a little more expensive (F15,000 instead of F10,000) but it was far better. Before I did anything else I had a good shower. If you just think about moving in any way here you break out into a sweat, it really isn’t pleasant. 

Now it is Saturday morning and I am sitting at the hotel waiting for Fatima to come collect me to go to the airport for my flight to Nairobi. Yesterday we had an agreement to meet at 11:30 at the hotel, then when we got to the hotel she said 09:00 but then she phoned last night and I have no idea what she said. It is 09:40 and she is not here so maybe I am supposed to make my own way to the airport. This is fine by me so if she isn’t here by 11:30 I will find a taxi and go on my own. 

I am really looking forward to getting back onto mainland Africa. I miss being able to communicate with my family and friends via sms and email. I also really want a shower that is not freezing cold. I have started to obsess about this! It is not so bad in the evenings having a cold shower because then I am hot and sticky but in the mornings it is pure torture to get under that ice clod water!

And to end .... a photo for my mother ha ha