Comoros Day 2: A Royal Photoshoot in Ntsoudjini

The pick-up time we were given for our six o’clock flight from Dar Es Salaam was three o’clock in the morning. I thought I was cutting it close by setting my alarm to 2:50 and turning up on the dot, but it took over half an hour for the entire group – which was just over a dozen people – to assemble in the hotel’s reception hall. Still, we made it to the airport with plenty time to spare. The only person missing from yesterday was the French military attaché, who I imagine might have gotten on a government special when our flight was postponed.

This time, there were no technical issues. The plane took off on time and arrived in Moroni before eight o’clock in the morning. Flying in, we quickly found ourselves under the peak of the broad and majestic Karthala Volcano, which had once raised the entire island of Ngazidja (or Grande Comore) from the sea. Its slopes were a light and lush green, which spread out and across the entire island until the borders of human settlements. Even from afar, many houses appeared to be in various stages of either construction or disrepair. I was told on the subsequent drive to Moroni that several new building projects were being developed by Chinese companies, including a hotel and living quarters for the spectators of the Indian Ocean Island Games to be held in 2027. This sporting event brings together athletes from the Comoros, Madagascar, Maldives, Mauritius, Mayotte, Réunion, and the Seychelles, giving them a chance to face less daunting competitors than at the Olympics.

It was beautifully sunny when we arrived, but the clouds began to roll in mid-morning. Fortunately, we were not detained at the border for too long. We – that is, the four foreigners – had our pictures taken and received a visa sticker in our passports for a thirty-euro fee. Once we were let past the till, we had to fill in our addresses at the only office in the hall, and two officers performed a rather in-depth investigation of all our luggage over a long and creaky wooden desk. Somehow, while all this was happening, Mario made the acquaintance of the two foreigners – two Mauritian gentlemen of Punjabi descent – and found a taxi driver. We all shared the ride south to Moroni, dropping off Mario midway as he had been unable to find a hotel in the city.

Driving on, we came across a giant wedding procession just on the outskirts of Hantsambou: towards the front were two men carrying big black boards on which the lavish jewels of the bride were spread out. There was one board with golden necklaces, pendants, and earrings, and another one with the same accoutrements in silver. Then followed men wearing white kanzus and golden kufis with white inscriptions, some of them completing the look with navy-coloured blazers. The older men wore long robes of all colours over their kanzus, and golden jewellery sparkled on the bright dresses and below the head coverings of the women. The most prominent person I saw was an elderly turbaned man in a black robe with golden lace, who walked ahead of a coterie of women with another man behind him holding a red and gold parasol over his head. The man was holding the hand of a young, happy looking woman, so I assume (perhaps naively) that he was the father of the bride.

Once I had checked into my hotel, I set out North of Moroni on foot. The air was humid and heavy, and I found myself sweating profusely before I even made a single step uphill. I first crossed through the Volo-Volo Market, which is a chaotic place full of everything from fruit to clothes and toys. The air is even heavier there, laden with the smell of unknown objects rotting both in the sun and in the shade of the shanty houses beyond. Having had some trouble finding the market, I had even more trouble getting out of it, filing along the road with the buyers and avoiding cars until I reached the main road.

The main road, called the Route Nationale, circles the entire island of Ngazidja. However, despite serving some four hundred thousand people, it barely has space for two cars riding side by side, let alone for pedestrians. The bends felt particularly dangerous, and I had to cross to the other side every time I felt like an oncoming car might not see me in time. As I walked along like this with my camera out of my backpack, people kept asking me to take pictures of them. They were mostly young men. Of these, only one teenage boy gave me his WhatsApp to send him the shots, while two others wanted me to upload them to all my social media. Everyone else was excited simply by the prospect of having their picture taken.

On the southern end of Itsandra, I noticed a wall built of volcanic stone on the right side of the road. When I peered through the gate, I saw a whole pathway made of volcanic stone unfurl before me and up onto the hill, flanked by two walls made of the same material. This, I realised, was the path to the old fort of Itsandra, one of the two main sultanates on Ngazidja before the arrival of the French. Walking along the solitary pathway, I scared away dozens of sunning lizards, who populate this island in numbers I have never seen before. They were of different kinds and sizes: some as small as a finger and some bigger than a hand. A few particularly confident males tried to engage in a pushup contest with me before scurrying off in a panic as I carried on my way.

The fort was empty bar two young local men. I had seen them talking to each other from a distance, but by the time I drew near, they had separated, one of them walking down just a few paces in front of the other without saying a word. Their replies to my bonjours were muted and unwilling, and after we passed each other, I turned around to catch a second glimpse of the man who, unusually, seemed to have dyed hair. He had just turned around to do the same. After I had spent a few minutes walking around the ruins, he returned to fetch his backpack, which he had forgotten in his confused embarrassment. I drew my own conclusions.

The fort was derelict and overrun by vegetation – not just long grass, but also young papaya trees sprouting in the arches. There was a big human excrement in one of the arches, and walking around it raised a cloud of countless flies, so I decided not to walk into that section of the fort. On the opposite side, the path was overgrown by such tall vegetation that a human poo would not even be visible, so I abandoned my attempt to go there as well. Instead, I contented myself to look over the town of Itsandra in its modest grey beauty. To the right I saw the minarets of its major mosques, and once I had descended, I peeked into a small domed mausoleum to see the tombs amidst the rich array of carpets.

Just north of this group of tombs lies Itsandra’s municipal beach, which attracts locals with its sandy shore on an island where much of the coastline is rough and jagged. Unfortunately, just like all the roadsides and pretty much every place on the island, it is filled with trash. With few tourists, the Comoros faces little outside pressure to manage its waste better like the Seychelles or Mauritius, which means that the island is positively drowning in plastic. Of course, this is a self-perpetuating cycle, with trash turning off tourists and the absence of tourists leading to more trash – or at least, more visible trash.

At the northern end of Itsandra I took a right turn, having found a marker on Google Maps for a Royal Cemetery. An older lady who stopped me on the street and asked me, with a very puzzled look, what I was taking pictures of and where I was going, said there was no such thing. However, I figured that the words “royal” and “cemetery” might not be the words locals use to describe the often very small groups of tombs belonging to local sultans or village leaders and a few of their family members. Sure enough, once I had climbed the hill and reached the village of Ntsoudjini, I saw a big tombstone and several smaller tombs under the mosque to my right.

As I wandered around with sweat pouring from my face, a very prim, clean-shaven gentleman in a grey kanzu asked whether I was all right and needed any help. I said I did not, but seeing as he was standing by an outdoor shop, it occurred to me that I should buy a few bottles of water. The man had seen me taking pictures of the tombs and began conversing with me. Leading me to a big building on the northern side of the intersection, he explained it was once the palace of the local ruler, and he showed me a small cannon embedded in its walls. The palace was a large but austere building, apparently hollowed out since its heyday. Among its pillars, children were playing a mashup of football and rugby, which consisted of running in between the pillars while avoiding the competing team and putting the ball in the opposing goal.

We walked through this pillared hallway onto a small side street, arriving at an unassuming building made of the same volcanic rock as almost everything else. It looked just like another shack, but a plaque on the outer wall claimed it was a mosque built in the fourteenth century. My companion opened the heavy wooden doors and, in the sunlight pouring in from outside, I saw the colourful rugs decking the floors and walls. Directly opposite the wall stood the alcove indicating the direction to Mecca – the mosque’s mihrab – and to the right of it hung an old kerosene lamp.

To the right of the tombs, the indefatigable villager proceeded to show me the mosque, alleging that some writing had recently been discovered on the top of its walls. I pretended to see it, as he had raised the point multiple times before, but to me it just seemed like shoddy streaks of paint. Above the tombs, the man also showed me the village’s giant cistern. He was not sure when it was built, but even had it been yesterday it would still have been an impressive project for such a small village. We clambered down again and returned past the cemetery, where the doorkeeper of the old mosque was stretched out and keeping watch over the intersection.

On this little impromptu tour, we chanced to bump into a man with a resplendent white kanzu, a red vest, and a golden kufi. He joked that he would have been the master of the palace and asked jovially whether I wanted to take a picture of him, “for history’s sake.” As I photographed the man standing proudly in front of the mosque’s annex, it dawned on me that what he said was not a joke: this was the descendant of the local ruler’s family. We shook hands cordially, and he looked genuinely happy to share this story with an outsider (who might, perhaps, put it on the internet and help put his village on the map).

Having given a small token of appreciation to the man who had so enthusiastically showed me around his village, I made my way down to the main road again. I passed through the village of Hantsambou once more and got all the way to Itsandra Beach, where I found a big high-end resort serving lunch. I parked myself there for the better part of one hour, using its wi-fi and bathroom, and ordering myself a delicious local curry made using evidently fresh coconut milk.

The walk had been long, so I exchanged my large bills for smaller ones at the hotel and hailed a cab on the side of the road. The public transport needs of Ngazidja are largely met by ordinary taxis, which course from north to south and south to north both day and night. Since there is only one major road on the entire island, people simply hop onto whatever taxi is heading in the general direction they need. Indeed, the address is usually less of a problem than the vehicle’s occupancy: several taxis passed me by before I found one with a free seat.

I was back in Moroni at three o’clock and used the rest of my afternoon to walk around its port and medina. Perhaps the most famous sight of Moroni is the Badjanani Juma Mosque, or the Old Friday Mosque, which stands above a small inlet where fishermen moor their boats. Right under the mosque lie the rusty remains of a large vessel that must have been taken apart many years ago, and across the inlet lies a yard with a driving school and multiple scrap cars. I remember one of the Mauritians saying that the island is full of old, decommissioned cars, which must be yet another symptom of the country’s waste-management problem.