Until a few days before our departure, the only piece of information at hand about the current state of the Comoros was that Mary McFadden, the dress designer, had supposedly been there in the late 70's to look at print patterns. Not a hell of a lot to go on.
The most recent guidebooks to the Indian Ocean area described the Comoros as politically unstable, with armed curfew patrols on the streets at night. The islands were difficult and expensive to reach, economically depressed, and hostile to foreigners. Offshore, rumor had it, the swarms of sharks made fishing for anything else next to impossible. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta advised that the Comoros were rife with cholera and infested by a virulent strain of malaria for which Fansadar, the only known medication, in one out of ten cases, caused the patient's skin to fall off.
With this news, the reconnaissance group was down to Michael, Peter Stevens, and myself. Michael had just learned that the U.S. State Department had recently opened a Consulate in the Comoros. Though I had to protest that the virgin mystique of our destination had been violated, I was secretly relieved. We had a sanctuary in case things went really badly. Armed with a list of contacts from a former U.N. assistance administrator to the place, Michael and I set off from New York on November 20, 1986, bound for the Comoros via Paris and points south. Peter, traveling from Canada would meet us in Paris.
Tucked into one of the thirty-six pockets of my Banana Republic photojournalist's vest was a copy of the "Traveller's Guide to East Africa and the Indian Ocean," 1983 edition, a last-minute bonanza of three-year-old information. Strategically scattered among the other pockets were two kinds of mini survival tools, a set of plastic survival information cards, a brass whistle, a chemical "rocket" flare, a Swiss army knife ("Explorer" model, the smallest with a magnifying glass), a glass bottle of 500 mg. Chloroquine anti-malarial tablets (didn't want to lose my skin), several rolls of film, a map of Paris, a pocket sized English-French dictionary, an English-Swahili dictionary, three pens, my house keys, and a solar powered Sony Walkman with headphones and tapes. Of course, airport security went crazy- even back then.
Once on board the plane I took out the guide:COMOROS: Population 330,000 (U.N Estimate 1978), Capital, Moroni (Grande Comore). A string of beautiful islands of volcanic origin, surrounded by coral reefs, the unspoiled Comoro islands stretch across the North of the Mozambique Channel between Madagascar and East Africa. The Archipelago comprises the four islands of Grande Comore, Anjouan, Moheli and Mayotte (French spellings). The French continue to hold onto Mayotte as a Naval Base.
The Comoro Islands, located between East Africa and the Northern tip of Madagascar. So much for geography. The account continued, noting that:
The special atmosphere of the Comoros is attributable both to the beautiful scenery and to the unique racial mixture, which reflects the successive invasions of sea-faring people in this part of the world: Arabs, Persians, Malays, Malagasy and Africans. The strongest influences are Arab and African and for this reason the main religion is Islam and the predominant language is a variant of Kiswahili.
A variant? That knocked off my English-Swahili dictionary. Then came the kicker:
... A big attraction of the Comoros to visitors is the scope for fishing--tuna, barracuda, shark, grouper, scad and, occasionally, the coelacanth.
Give me a break! I could hardly believe people visited the Comoros to catch the coelacanth as a game fish. Or, for that matter, that any visitor had ever caught one.
I've never had fun in Paris. When I'm there the weather always seems to be raw and overcast. I've always felt alien and alone. This time I wasn't alone, but the weather was the same. Michael had arranged for us to be met by an expatriate Comoran scientist, Dr. Ibin Said, who had fled to France to escape the current regime in the Comoros. In fact, there are thousands of Comorans living in France, some for political reasons, but most for work. Dr. Said enthusiastically drove us about town, pointing out ministries. Michael was busy proposing postage stamp swaps; making deals. I slumped in the back seat, pockets bulging uncomfortably, babbling niceties in high-school French, swooning in a jet-lag daze.
After a few hours of this torture we joined Peter aboard an Air France Airbus bound for the Comoros. The flight would touch down at Marseilles, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and Dar Es Salam, Tanzania en route. Crammed into the big jet were hundreds of homeward bound Comorans, and about a dozen Arab dignitaries in First Class on their way to Jeddah.
Soon I was back with the pocket-guide absorbing a capsule history of the Comoros, a history which would still be repeating itself over the duration of our project.
In times gone by, the region of the western Indian Ocean, surrounding the Comoros, was known as the Sea of Zinj. Arab slave and spice traders plied these waters from the 7th century A.D., establishing fortified settlements in the Comoros. Later, the islands also became a safe haven for pirates, including the legendary Davy Jones.
Settled by Arabs with their African slaves, Islam was the dominant cultural influence for over ten centuries. The French landed at Mayotte in 1841 "persuading" the sultan to cede his island to France. The other islands soon followed. In 1912 the Comoros were proclaimed a French Colony, under the jurisdiction of the Governor General of Madagascar, the Comoro's immense island neighbor to the West.
As a secondary colonial dependency, the Comoros were largely ignored by France, while private French companies administered plantations producing vanilla, spices and Ylang Ylang flowers for perfume essence. The companies, the local nobility, and the colonial administration prospered, while the impoverished majority of the islanders remained at pre-colonial levels of development well into the present century.World War II spelled the beginning of the end of the colonial era. In 1946, the Madagascar connection was broken and the islands became financially and administratively autonomous, though still a French colony. After French paratroopers repressed a student strike in 1968, the French government conceded to the formation of internal political parties.
In 1972, Ahmed Abdallah Abderemane of the Union Democratique des Comores was elected President of the Council of Government. The newly formed Chamber of Deputies adopted a "resolution for independence," leading to an agreement which incorporated a five year delay and an island-by-island referendum. The referendum was held in December 1974. Three of the islands voted 96% in favor of independence, but the fourth, Mayotte, purportedly voted 64% for staying under French rule.
This led to complications. The French government pressured the new Comoran Government to propose a constitution that would allow any island which twice rejected constitutional proposals to remain free of the independent state. To block this move and the loss of Mayotte, President Abdallah declared independence unilaterally on July 6, 1975. But Mayotte's deputies in the Comoran Parliament cabled the French government, placing themselves and their island under its protection. So, awkwardly for Abdallah and the new Republic, the island of Mayotte remained with France.President Abdallah had other problems. A group calling itself the United National Front opposed his personal power and favored a more conciliatory approach to France and Mayotte. He was deposed on August 3rd, 1975 in a coup lead by leftist Ali Soilih. Ironically, Abdallah, after less than a month as President of his new country, was exiled to France.
The Comoros were admitted to the U.N. as a unified state on November 12th, 1975. Soilih became head of the government January 2nd, 1976, supported by a "Revolutionary Council of State." Soilih's "Revolutionary Youth" and the army set about transforming the Comoros from a colonial dependency to a progressive socialist state in the shortest possible time. In true "Red Guard" tradition, old government records were destroyed, including the documentation of Coelacanth catches instituted by the French scholars Millot and Anthony.What's more, using the two DC 4's of Air Comore, Soilih "invaded" Mayotte. One plane was loaded with weapons, the other with Soilih and members of his guard. Soilih's plane landed first. Soilih announced the liberation of Mayotte from French rule. In a move designed to paralyze the French response, Soilih's announcement was timed to parallel a speech by the Comoran Ambassador to the U.N. General Assembly. At the U.N., the French Ambassador walked out on the Comoran Ambassador's speech. On Mayotte, Soilih was ridiculed by the locals, who placed barricades on the runway to keep the second plane- the one carrying the arms- from landing. The invasion of Mayotte was foiled, and a chastised Soilih was sent back to Grand Comoro island.
By then, the economy was in chaos, and a drought brought on food shortages in 1977. Soilih faced considerable local opposition to his programs and by mid 1978 had survived four coup attempts.
Enter French mercenary, Bob Denard, a twentieth century "swashbuckler" who, in the sixties, had backed Moise Tshombe's unsuccessful Katanga secession in the former Belgian Congo. Denard had supposedly helped depose Abdallah and install Soilih back in '75. Now in May of '78 he was back on the scene, arriving with a band of white mercenary commandos off the beach at the town of Itsandra, Grand Comoro. At night, Zodiaks were launched from what had seemed a harmless grain freighter bearing the weekly Comoran transfusion of rice. Commandos stormed the beach, halted whatever night traffic was flowing along the shore road, then surrounded the Presidential Palace and army headquarters. Soilih was quickly placed under house arrest. On May 29th, he was shot dead during a supposed "rescue attempt." Soilih was forty two years old. His body was placed in the back of a jeep and dumped off at his mother's property for unceremonious burial.
A freighter off the Comoros, similar to that used by Denard's invasion comando team.
But Denard was not planning to run the Comoros, at least not directly. Abdallah was invited to return from France and assume the presidency of this new politico-military directorate. Denard would be under contract as chief of security and his white mercenaries in charge of the Presidential Guard. Thus was born the Federal Islamic Republic of the Comoros, the place we would soon see for ourselves: The "home" of the coelacanth.The guide concluded ominously:
There is still considerable opposition to President Abdallah's rule both within the country and outside it....
Our ex-pat scientist could attest to that.Quite a commotion of Comoran family was life taking place in the airplane cabin. Pungent diapers were changed in the row behind us. Elsewhere, another swaddled youngster was bawling his brains out. Wincing, Peter unscrewed the cap from a small bottle of complimentary Bordeaux. He poured the wine into a plastic glass and looked out the window. "I'll tell ya one thing, I'll be returning in first class," he vowed to the stratosphere.
I was disappointed we would travel all the way to the Comoros by jumbo jet. Visions of island hopping Pan Am Clippers die hard. But there was a big plus to this arrangement. Jumbos carry tons of freight as well as passengers. This meant "our" coelacanth could travel all the way to the States by commercial jet. A charter would be unnecessary, and that made the economics of our project a hundred times more feasible.
A strict announcement was made on landing in Jeddah: "In accordance with the rules of Islam, all alcoholic beverages are to be locked in cabinets; all magazines are to be concealed in seat-back pockets during the 45 minute lay-over. There will be no exiting for transit passengers." From the plane's open door, the jetport sprawl made J.F.K. seem provincial.Flying at night over Africa put me in a reflective mood. Down below in the invisible vastness of the Sudan and Ethiopia lay the cradle of humankind. All the Lucy's- the famous little 2.5 million year old human ancestor-, and other hominid forebears, played out their lives down there in the last couple days of that compressed year of planetary history. The original battlefield of our existence--five miles down. Yet on board we were watching a movie and now sipping complimentary Veuve Clicquot, playing out our own lives. The theater of human activity had moved elsewhere.
I mused about Latin names. Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus. Why use Latin? Once this priestly code of scientific nomenclature is cracked, it is almost embarrassing to see that Latin names are for obvious and simple features or characteristics no more obscure than "Sitting Bull" or "Flying Eagle." Homo habilis: Handy Man, Homo Erectus: upright man.
"Coelacanth:" "hollow spine." It was the family name for the fossil. The living specimen "discovered" in 1938 was dubbed Latimeria chalumnae smith: Latimeria for Courtnay-Latimer, the museum curator, Chalumnae for the River Chalumna off which it had been trawled, and Smith for J.L.B. Smith- who named it. The 1952 Comoran coelacanth was first thought to be a subspecies of the first specimen as it had no dorsal fin. It was called " Latimeria malania anjouani." Malania for Malan, the South African Prime Minister who made the plane available for Smith's flight to the Comoros, and "anjouani" for the island of Anjouan, where it had been caught. With later specimens it became evident that the absent dorsal of "anjouani" must have been snapped off by a shark. Back to Latimeria chalumnae smith.
Latin is used in the language games of the scientific community simply as a technical language to keep references precise and common across cultures where common names change. It's all done by classifying physical features. For simplicity, I have mostly tried to avoid Latin in my account. I could point out that the lobe-finned fishes are of the class Sarcopterygii, belonging to the phylum Scilarii; that they include the orders Dipnoi, the lungfishes, and Crossopterygii, considered a subclass by some scientists, which breaks down into the orders or suborders Rhipidistia, containing our old pal Eusthenopteron, the Struniformes, and the Actinistia comprising the family coelacanthidae, including the living coelacanth: single genus Latimeria, single species Chalumnae Smith. But I won't!
What's more, a new system of classifying called cladistics has reinterpreted the whole lot based on evolutionary events, so now even scientists can't quite agree on what's what. It's more than you need to know- unless you're a Ph.D. candidate in ichthyology or a practicing fish scientist--which I certainly am not.We stopped at Dar Es Salam, Tanzania, our jump-off point for the Comoros. It was morning. The open cabin door let in an unmistakable swill of jet fumes and warm, musky, African air. I hadn't sniffed this nostalgic mix since '73, thirteen years earlier, when I came to Kenya to film a solar eclipse.
Uniformed African cabin attendants scurried gently down the isles with portable vacuum cleaners, sucking up three meal's worth of crumbs, straightening seat covers, delicately folding the seat belts of unoccupied places in careful diagonal overlaps. I felt a thrill go through me as I sensed or perhaps remembered those thousands of exotic events outside our cabin that made up the excitement of Africa.
Someone told us the President of the Comoros would be traveling in First Class from Dar to Moroni. I didn't like the idea. I'd just read all about him. It made the plane seem vulnerable to politics as well as weather and mechanics. I'm nervous enough in the air.
Our flight across the Horn of Africa from Jeddah.
The flight out to the Comoros took only an hour. I counted our total time from New York to Moroni at 31 hours, including lay-overs. We would need to sustain a living coelacanth for at least that long for a flight in the opposite direction.
The Three Islands of the Federal Republic. On the left is Grand Comoro.
Our descent took us along the west coast of Grand Comoro island. The cloud covered summit of the volcano Kartala dominates its southern half. Other smaller craters bump the northern landscape like swollen glands. Volcanism is very evident from the air. Frozen black lava flows spill into the sea from the slopes of Kartala and its northern kin. Between the black flows are other older ones, greened with new vegetation. A road runs along the lava coast. Contrary to the guide book there are no fringing reefs on this side of the island, and very few beaches.The capital, Moroni, more of a town than a city, sprawls out on a plain at the edge of Kartala's slope, perhaps an ancient lava sill. This drops off abruptly into the sea, affording a harbor that has been partly encased by cement jetties.
Moroni, with its Friday Mosque, beneath the volcano Karthala.
On the runway of the International Airport at Hahaya, the Guard Presidential, the armed Comoran contingent led by the white mercenaries of Bob Denard, lined up to greet President Abdallah. We never saw him.
Our Airbus at Hahaya Airport, Grand Comoro, 1986.
We were part of the crush at Hahaya Airport, a scene repeated weekly, when the jumbo arrives from France. Hundreds of family members were on hand to greet their kin. Women yelled at relatives. Children shrieked. Men shouted in French and Comoran. Long, scraggly stalled lines formed at the entry stations where forms had to be filled out. Everyone pressed together through the immigration passages into the lobby, where taxi drivers solicited the more affluent. Customs and security officials added to the disorder. Bag boys harassed us, first to carry our luggage, then to complain, unsatisfied with the amount and currency of their tips. It was overwhelming, hot, and dirty. Moving to the exits we were sucked full blast into the immediate present under the blazing Comoran sun.Dr. Said had arranged for us to be met by his younger brother, Abbas. As the only white passengers, we were an obvious mark. Michael's well spoken French, alert and excited, issued forth in Bren gun bursts of questions, negotiations and arrangements. He was the right man for the job.
Our Coelacanth Reconnaissance Expedition had arrived.