Comoros Day 4: Visiting the Coelacanths at the National Museum

With my flight back to Dar Es Salaam scheduled for 13:45, my options for how to spend the morning were limited. However, having found the national museum closed yesterday, I did not have to rack my brains to figure out a programme. The visit took less than half an hour, but I spent another fifteen minutes waiting for the building to open, for although the museum’s official visiting hours begin at eight o’clock in the morning, only the most assiduous employees arrive at that time. I came at around 8:20 myself, when only one of the three ladies who served the ticket booth was present, and she asked me to wait while she turned on some of the electronic information panels.

This is not to say, by the way, that there were three ladies selling tickets at the ticket booth, which would have been absurd considering how small the museum is and how few visitors it probably receives. Rather, the women take turns at serving customers and spend the rest of their free time keeping each other company. I believe they are also nominally in charge of selling the souvenirs on display behind the counter, but seeing how dusty these are, I do not imagine this to be a very taxing responsibility.

The museum has two floors. The bottom floor houses a single room with objects from daily life in the Comoros, while the upper floor is roughly split into four spaces. The central space, which encircles the staircase just behind the entrance, is dedicated to the history and architecture of the Comoros. To its left is a small dark room housing local exemplars of the Qur’an, which separates the historical section from the geological section on the far left. On the far right lies the most interesting part of the museum: the biology section. This is where the museum keeps two giant preserved coelacanths, along with three smaller preserved coelacanths in the embryonic stage. The Comoros is one of the very few nations where these prehistoric fish survive, sometimes emerging from the depths and getting caught in fishermen’s nets. The museum has panels aimed at the conservation of this species. Explaining that a coelacanth is too fatty to eat, the boards tell people what to do when they accidentally catch one. 

After completing this visit, I returned to my hotel to shower and pack my things. I have become so unused to tropical weather that even walking around the museum made me sweat profusely, and I could not bear the idea of spending the rest of the day sitting next to other people while wearing my rank clothes. Then I checked out. I had 7,750 Comorian Francs left in my wallet, which I judged should be enough to get me a taxi to the airport as long as I forewent food until I arrived in Dar Es Salaam. This was probably a good decision, as the sole driver I found who was willing to take me to the airport would accept no less than 7,500, explaining that 500 of this sum would go directly to paying the airport’s parking fees. The remaining 250 was a bi-coloured coin, which I kept as a souvenir for my dad. It was the only coin I had received as change during my entire stay.

My driver was a colourful fellow with opinions on many topics, and he did not let his feeble grasp of French interfere with his expressing them. For instance, he was a big fan of Vladimir Putin, claiming that Russia would help kick the French out of Mayotte. He himself had once used a boat to cross illegally into Mayotte and spent six months looking for a good job there before giving up and returning to Ngazidja. His recounting made it sound as though this were a very ordinary thing many people do, and perhaps that is so: the protagonist of the book I am currently reading attempts to make the same journey along with two dozen other people and a goat.

Unmarried, the driver made no secret of being a great lover of women. I had asked him why many ladies on the island smear their faces with a whitish paste but could not make him understand the question. Instead, he began to talk about how beautiful Comorian women are, especially those of Anjouan, and expressed shock that during my three days in the Comoros I had not sampled this aspect of the island. I am not quite sure what he meant with the comment that followed: it was either a recommendation of a hotel where the female employees are beautiful, or a recommendation of a hotel where one can procure beautiful women.      

The airport in Ngazidja turned out to be larger than I had assumed having only seen the arrivals area. It has a proper check-in hall and a big departure hall, which is built for two gates but appears to use just one of them. During my two-hour sojourn there, the only shop that accepts visa cards was closed, but the small café was open and serving customers. I believe that it also provides sustenance to a local family of birds, who have built their nest in between two ceiling lights, far out of reach for anybody who might even remotely care about this problem. Of course, this means that some of the seats in the hall are dotted with bird faeces, and visitors have to take care when choosing where to wait.

Since everyone arrived promptly and the passengers coming from Anjouan were waiting on the plane in sweltering heat, we began the boarding process early and arrived in Dar Es Salaam almost an hour before our estimated time. The time saved, however, made very little difference to me. I would still have to wait at the airport until my Nairobi-bound flight scheduled for half past nine.

An adult coelacanth

A baby coelacanth

The main hall of the National Museum