A Week Goes By in a Flash

It is incredible how quickly the time disappears when you are busy. I find it hard to believe that I am almost ready to leave Grand Comoros, it almost feels like I just got here.

The flight over here was really uneventful but it was long and having left the hotel at 3:30 in the morning, I was finished by the time I arrived just after midday. At least on the way I got one of the best views of Mount Kilimanjaro ever. It really was amazing!

On arrival, I had to get a visa. It is a little bit of a back to front method here. I got stamped into the country and then applied for the visa. Fortunately I was getting a diplomatic visa (the perks of working with the government) so there wasn't much chance of the visa not being approved. My friend and helper here in Grand Comoros, Fatouma, was also there to smooth the way for me. I got the visa and the next stop was Customs but there wasn't any trouble there either. After finding out why I was in the Comoros and that I didn't have anything to declare I was allowed to proceed.

Fatouma negotiated a price with a taxi and we headed off to the hotel. The hotel had my room waiting for me which was good since I was ready to crash. It is incredible how relative our perceptions are though. The first time I stayed at the Jardin de la Paix hotel, I thought the place was a small piece of heaven but then I had spent the previous night in a corrugated iron shack. Arriving this time, after my week long stay at the Voyager Hotel in Mombasa, this hotel room felt a little like a shack. It took a couple of days for me to acclimatise to my new surroundings and to acknowledge that they were really not all that bad.

My very bare room

One of the first reminders about the challenges of working in the Comoros was the power outage that started just after my arrival at the hotel until the next day. The hotel switched on their generator just after 6pm but turned it off again just after 9pm.  So when the lights were turned off it was very dark.

I was not a very happy person the next morning when I had to have a cold shower as the wall mounted water heater had no electricity with which to heat the water. The water pressure was also really low so I was jumping around under the shower trying to get as wet as possible. My contact person, Kamar, came to the hotel in the morning to collect me and we went to the Ministry of Fisheries' offices. We settled down in the conference room and the Fisheries Minister gave us a speech to open the workshop and that is where things stopped running smoothly. After the minister had left we tried to connect to the internet but there was no connection. So someone suggested that we move to one of the other buildings. No sooner had we got there when we were informed that the connection was working in the conference room so we trooped back again only to discover when we got back there that no, it really wasn't working. Eventually we settled down in the second building and the work began.

The Fisheries Ministry

Each day we managed to last until 2 pm then the electricity went out. The generator was powered up and work continued. On the first day though we had to eventually abandon work in the afternoon because not only did the electricity go out but the entire island's internet connectivity went down too. Some of the participants were getting very frustrated but this is the reality of the situation and when your database sits on the internet, these are the problems that are encountered. Every year I have had these issues in the Comoros so I know what it is going to be like. Anyway on the second day we worked until the power went out, waited for all the rest of the ministry to go home, and then used the freed up bandwidth to get through almost all the work. It left us with day three to validate all the information and with a touch of enthusiasm we managed to finish before the power shut down.

Part of the Comorian group

My final full day in Moroni I spent doing some work for one of my colleagues in Durban. I have been spending almost every spare moment working on his project so it was good to finally finish my part of it today. Now I can get back to concentrating on my own work. One problem though is that with the poor internet connection, I have not been able to send him the file. Guess it will have to be sent from Zanzibar.

The weather rolls down the mountain

So my next destination is Zanzibar. I fly there tomorrow afternoon via Nairobi and, as with all travel in this part of the world, it is going to be a long day. Zanzibar is about one hour direct flying away but it will take me a transit time of about 10 hours to get there! The most frustrating thing is that we will be flying straight over Zanzibar on the way to Nairobi. Next blog will be from the Spice Island!