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Comoros Islands Surfing Anjouan Surfing

“We have the sea and nothing else,” an old bearded man on the ferry said as we waited to disembark in Mutsamudu’s port. Photo: Kew

“We have the sea and nothing else,” an old bearded man on the ferry said as we waited to disembark in Mutsamudu’s port. Smoke rose from villages along the luxuriant shoreline, shadowed by steamy, mountainous rain forest and fronted by a calm blue sea and sweaty fishermen in dugout canoes, setting out in the shimmering morning heat.

“What about spices?” I asked.

“Clove not enough. We have nothing.”

“Ylang-ylang?”

“Yes, we have the ylang-ylang, but this has not made us rich. Only the president is rich, and he does not grow ylang-ylang.”

Anjouan once supplied about 90 percent of the world’s ylang-ylang, a wispy yellow flower that produces an essential oil used in expensive French perfumes. Transplanted from Asia to Comoros by French colonialists, the flowers enhanced both the air and the Comorian economy for more than a century, and the islands enjoyed a bit of worldly importance. But this is no more—demand has plunged as most French perfume manufacturers have turned to synthetic essence, and because ylang-ylang was introduced by the French as a cash crop intended for French markets, it has no traditional value in Comorian society.

“At least Anjouan should smell good,” Rarick said.

Vanilla, the Comoros’ other main export, has seen a recent collapse in price due to marketplace speculation and oversupply. Seafood exports are nil. So today, to make ends meet, most Anjounais rely heavily on foreign aid and remittances sent home from expat relatives living in Marseilles.

Once entry was cleared and we had stuffed our bags into the black Toyota truck of Moustali, our jovial Anjounais guide, who drove us across the island to our destination, a village on the windward southwest coast. Along the way were square brown roadside patches of cloves drying in the sun, their heated scent wafting through the truck’s open windows. At the breezy village of Sima, two armed military men on motorcycles sidled up to us and asked Moustali, “Who are these people? where are they from? And when are they leaving?”

Our serpentine route wound through thick forests of breadfruit and coconut palm; past tangled plantations of banana, ylang-ylang, coffee, nutmeg, cassava, vanilla, taro, avocado, cinnamon, jasmine, mango; alongside rocky creeks and gushing waterfalls; through small villages of mud huts, chickens scrambling across the road, goats munching on grass, wide-eyed children who screamed “Bonjour!” as we rumbled past.

“These people seem blissfully unaware that they’re independent,” Rarick said.

Men sat beneath palm trees, some playing games of dominoes, many gazing at nothing. Colorfully veiled women had faces coated with yellowish sandalwood paste, affording them a ghoulish look in the shade of the loads of wood atop their heads. Everyone smiled and waved at this truckload of mzungus (white people), a rare sight for Comorians, and soon we were skirting sublime vistas of the swell-laced Anjouan coast.

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