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Obscure Country Profile #2: Comoros

By Sarah Stodola

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The beaches on the tiny island country of Comoros are (I imagine) the beaches you always wish you were on when you go to the beaches that people generally go to. On the Comoros beaches, there are no buildings, no people, no development, no (or very little) tourism. It's a dream come true to us First Worlders. But it could be the African archipelago's biggest problem. Or oversight. Or failure. Depending on your perspective.

It could be, save for the fact that there is an active volcano on the country's main island, Grande Comore, threatening to erupt at any time, and this seems to overshadow the lack of a tourism industry in terms of exigency. I don't know which is more interesting; the fact that Comoros could have a thriving tourism industry, thus perhaps pulling itself out of the extreme poverty which seems to be all it has ever known, or the fact that this untapped resource could, at any moment, be completely wiped out by a flood of lava. Or, for a third option, the fact that the active volcano is actually very likely the reason that developers don't dare risk investing in Comoros' beachfront property.

There has been a scramble to develop an emergency evacuation procedure for the country. Imagine that - evacuating an entire country. Of course, this isn't your run of the mill country with a population in the tens of millions, but it does have a population larger than that of Boston. Imagine evacuating all of Boston. Then imagine that you are in Africa, and you have to evacuate the population of Boston with the resources available to you in Africa.

Image Courtesy GrahicMaps.com
Comoros is located between Africa's mainland and Madagascar (island to the right).

To make matters worse, the Comoros' three islands - in addition to Grande Comore, they are called Moheli and Anjouan - seem to be suffering from a pretty severe case of sibling rivalry. Whatever it is that makes people who are too much alike develop conflict with one another, Comoros' islands suffer from it. Which makes coordinating evacuation procedures rather trying. From what I can tell, the other two islands don't have to worry about the actual lava. What they do have to worry about is the utter lack of resources that will be available to them if the lava does flow over Grande Comore.

So living in Comoros is sort of like living in California, except without the industrialization and communication and technological innovation; insofar as there is a perpetual possibility of natural disaster. The Karthala volcano last erupted on Grande Comore in 1991. It was a small eruption, causing relatively little damage. Before this, the volcano last erupted in 1977, destroying a nearby village. An eruption once reached the outskirts of the country’s capital, Moroni. So, of course, the severity of the potential disaster depends on the size of the eruption. It could simply make life interesting for a couple of days in Comoros, or it could cause widespread panic and death.

On the other side of all this, perhaps one shouldn’t forget that the islands of Comoros would not exist were it not for volcanic activity. One must always take the good with the bad, it seems.

Speaking of the good, every resource on the country I can find says the beaches are breathtaking and largely unoccupied. There are a few hotels with their own beaches, but outside of these they are completely unrestricted. Once you leave the beaches, you are in hills and mountains (not hard to deduce from the earlier paragraphs). Comoros is one of the world’s largest producers of both vanilla and perfume. Maybe Comoros doesn’t smell good, but it seems like it would. The archipelago's villages are said to offer a charming mixture of cultures.

It must be really nice there, as long as it isn’t the rainy season and there is no volcanic activity to speak of. And as long as the siblings are cooperating. On the other hand, it would be pretty neat to see a volcano erupt.

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Sarah Stodola is the Managing Editor of Me Three.  She can be contacted at [email protected].

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