No Water

I am now in Mayotte! I have been here for almost a month now and it is a real change compared to La Reunion because Mayotte is like Africa.



It doesn't look like it when you step out of the plane but Mayotte is a part of France and it will soon become the latest French county. I soon got the same feeling I used to have when I was spending my holidays in Africa. Everybody is staying and living outside as it is extremely hot. There is no cafeteria in the schools so the kids all go home at lunch time and they meet again in the streets in the evening while waiting for dinner time. Everything is slower around here because of the heat, even the locals who drive don't go faster than 40kmh; you wonder sometime if they are afraid of going faster to not disturb the way things are. It is quite common to see women lying on the side of the road: why move around when it is so hot?



If you do not have a lot of money, your house will be made of metal sheets and the fence limiting your property will either be made of braided palm leafs, metal sheets or straightened recovered oil barrels. If you have more money, you will build your house room per room; it is quite common to see houses where each room has an external door because the use of the room will vary over the time. In this case you will find on the roof the metallic rods that strengthen concrete ready to support the extension of the house and on the side the stairs which will one day lead to the first floor once it is built. You have to be very careful when you settle close to those houses because one day you have a great view of Grande Terre and the next you only get to look at the neighbour's bathroom. Whatever the house you can always count on one thing: there will always be a satellite dish on the roof.



There was a water shortage for a few days two weeks after my arrival. We were surprised the first time it happened when we came back from work, we told ourselves that we would be able to take a shower in the morning but there was also no water in the morning. It is always nice to go to work smelling like yesterday's sweat and I can tell you that thinking that you are not the only one in the neighbourhood in this situation doesn't help much. In any case we told ourselves that it would not last long but it was the exact same thing when we got back to work the next afternoon. It lasted almost a week, we would be checking the tap in the evening not to miss the moment when we would be able to take a shower. It is funny because the schedule for the water shortage would be printed in the newspapers but it would never be followed. The company in charge of the water released a statement saying that there was a problem with a water pipe when in fact they were replacing the old ones with new ones. This is what they call communication in Mayotte.



I am a m'zungu, it means foreigner in the local language. Most of the m'zungus living here are either doing peacekeeping work (military, police, customs), health work (doctors, nurses, child doctors) or teaching work. Each time you will meet someone you will be part of the guessing game: You're military? No? A teacher? No? You're a doctor then? No? So what are you doing here are you on holiday? It seems that their imagination stops once the obvious choices have been exhausted. The m'zungus and the locals live in separate worlds but thankfully school is where all the kids interact. The m'zungus who work in the law enforcement often act as cowboys even when they are not on the job just creating some aggravation for the locals. Most teachers come here for the money, depending on their pay grade one teacher can get up to 100000€ incentive for a 4 years stay here thus Mayotte doesn't get the most skilled teachers nor the most motivated by their work. Thankfully some people understand that Mayotte is a special place and don't expect everyone to act the same way we act in France; of course those people are the one who have the best life here.