Anjouan

This is Anjouan, the easternmost island of the Comoros 🌏 The capital, Mutsamudu, is the second largest city in the Comoros. Founded in 1482, it is home to a 15th-century medina 🏛️ and an imposing citadel built with British support in 1860. The beaches have been devastated by oil, garbage 🗑️ and wrecks of ships or cars.

Mutsamudu

Medina is tortuous and maze-like. In unintelligible words but with clear gestures 👉 locals show me the way. Wonderfully wandering 🚶‍♂️ through the alleys. Sculpted Swahili doors and stone relief lintels on the larger houses and palaces. 🏛️ Goats look for food in the dried up river ️ filled with garbage.

A steep staircase leads to an abandoned Citadel 📍 with cannons high above the city. This was financed by the British in 1860 to protect the city 🛡️ against Pirates 👳‍♂️ from Madagascar.

Moya

A lovely scruffy little village overlooking a beautiful white beach 💟 I am accompanied in the water by dozens of boys, who like to roll in the sand. They offer their ghostly faces for photos 📸

The air here is heavy with the smell of cloves and YLANG-YLANG (a flower 🍃 used to make perfumes). On the right I see women on stairs painting other people's faces with sandalwood paste 🎨 The magical landscape features crumbling ancient Arabian plantations, endless rows of palms and trees whose branches are heavy with the load of ripening yellow bananas 🍌🍌🍌 Men with machetes 🗡️ in hand set out in the cool of this morning to cut new palm thatch for their roofs.

Anjouan is also the pearl of the Comoros. It fulfills all my lifelong fantasies of playing Robinson Crusoe 🧜‍♂️ on a deserted tropical island 🏖️