This is Mayotte

Mayotte is a French territory--recently voted a department--located between Madagascar and Mozambique. It is a small island, geographically part of the Comoros archipelago. The population is primarily Maoré, a Muslim people, descendants of East Africa. French colonization has seen rise to a small white European expat community there.

The land boasts a rich and savage nature. It is a volcanic island like Reunion, but thousands of years older, resulting in much lower mountain reliefs and flourishing, extensive coral barrier reefs. While Reunion has a significant coral lagoon enclosing 5 km of the west coast, Mayotte blows the competition out of the water with a lagoon surrounding the entirety of the island. It is a water wildlife paradise: dolphins, sea turtles, sting rays, octopus, and every tropical fish in the book team through these waters. Because the island is protected from the open ocean, there is no concern of larger predators like sharks, and the waters are still and calm--if you’re looking to
catch waves, this is not the place!

Mayotte looks socially and economically like what Reunion Island may have looked like 40 years ago: it has yet to see the hand of westernization. With French departmental status, however, that is expected to change. The land is undeveloped, peaceful, verdantly green. Many parts of the island have only recently been hooked up to the electrical grid and virtually no one has internet in their homes. There is a very limited agricultural infrastructure in place: 98% of goods and wares are imported. Bananas and manioc are in abundance, but beyond that, you better know a good fisherman!

In this primarily Muslim society, husbands still practice polygamy (although it has officially been banned under French law) and families are large. The population is growing rapidly, and as a result, is quite young. There is a reservedness of the people of Mayotte, most everyone keeps to themselves and outsiders are regarded wearily. Women wear beautiful, colorful fabrics, the city streets--as well as the rural routes--are splashed with color, people walking distances to reach family, friends, and work.

While some locals live comfortably on Mayotte, this is hardly the case for most. There are blatant extremities between rich and poor, black and white. At the end of our stay, we were picked up hitchhiking by a French guy driving a shiny blue BMW. He drove us from downtown Mamoudzou to the place where we had left our bags in Kaweni. This particular route led us through some really tough areas, places where rain had hollowed out the roads, only cratered muddy flats were left, and children were sitting idle and alone in front of ratty, fallen down homes. The question we all asked ourselves afterward was, why would you need or want to drive a BMW in this place? The racial divide was very noticeable; from an outsider’s perspective it was hard to ignore images of rich vs. poor, colonizer vs. colonist.

An additional issue on Mayotte is its proximity to the other islands in the Comoros, significantly worser off than their (comparably) wealthy French neighbors. There are over 20,000 arrests a year on Mayotte, police are constantly battling unauthorized immigration. Driving around the island, you can see endless check points where authorities stop cars to verify immigration status. There is a palpable tenseness that exists on this island: it begins locally and extends to the foreign politics that lap on Mayotte’s shores.

A socially complex but naturally beautiful place, both humbling and inspiring. We spent nine days there getting to know the land, the sea, the people, and the rhythm of a life that beats so far away from home.