Why Madagascar & Comoros

Here I am after almost a month since my last post. After my in depth coverage about the World Cup, I think I needed a little bit of a break. Things here in Liberia were pretty low key in August…it was like the calm before the storm that was supposed to hit us in the form of budgets in the following few months.

We also had a few interns here for a couple months and it was nice to have them around the Guest House as it bought a little bit of verve to an otherwise languid Guest House setting.

Since I needed to be in Liberia during the budget, I went ahead and took my 3rd home leave in August and the choice of destination this time had always been on my radar but it often had seemed inaccessible due to its isolation from most of the world so when I had the opportunity to visit Madagascar I looked no further.

Madagascar to me has always had a certain mystic associated with it, so long isolated from the rest of the land masses that unique species of plant and animals seems synonymous with the country…a country of lemurs, chameleons and many more weird creatures like the aye-aye and the bizarrely beautiful looking baobab trees. For someone like me who absolutely loved pouring over National Geographic magazines as a kid, Madagascar had to be a must visit place.


The choice of Comoros came about differently however. Earlier this year while I was researching Madagascar and its geography I happened to glance at a bunch of nondescript islands to the north of Madagascar and what I stumbled upon was the island nation of Comoros. I was pretty amazed that I had never heard of this country. I definitely don’t consider myself as geographically ignorant so not knowing anything about this country attracted my interest.

To my amazement, I found out that Comoros has a rich sea faring history and was rich with lore of Sinbad the Sailor who its believed visited these islands multiple times. In the 1500’s, the country was used as an essential pit stop by European sea travelers on their way to India and the Far East. The country however slipped into oblivion with the advent of the Suez Canal when it became a far more economical sea route connecting East and West and since them Comoros seems to have been forgotten by the rest of the world.

I had 16 days of leave and after a long deliberation I decided to spend 6 days in Comoros and the remaining 10 days in Madagascar with the assumption that I want to see as much of Comoros as possible since I probably will never visit it again in my life while Madagascar is too big a country to see in either 10 or 16 days so I would just pick a couple destination in Madagascar and cover them instead of trying to see as much of the country.

My flight took me from Monrovia to Nairobi via Accra and then further on to Johannesburg. It was pretty interesting that I was returning to Jo'burg so soon after my last visit in June. From Jo’burg I would catch another flight to Madagascar and then the final leg would take me to Comoros after a night in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar.

About 30mins after taking off from Nairobi, the captain called our attention on the public announcement system to look out of the window to the left. As I peered into the sky, I saw a dark peak blanketed by cotton white clouds and I knew instantly that it was Mt. Kilimanjaro. It was a spectacular sight and as I gaped at it I wondered if I would ever be able to scale it some day (I was planning to ascend a volcanic peak in Comoros, so that would be a good test for me to see if I have what it takes to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro).

I got in to Madagascar early evening and had barely enough time to find a place to stay that night and check out a local bar. The next day I woke up early with the intention of checking out Antananarivo (or Tana as it’s affectionately called). The flight to Comoros was at noon so this presented me with the best opportunity to see Tana as I knew fully well that even though I had 10 days of stay in Madagascar I would not be spending a great deal of time in the capital once I returned from Comoros.

The capital’s most prominent structure is the Queen’s Place which is overlooking the city from a hill while the old city is based on the slopes. I walked around the city center and then walked up the hill to see the Queen's place but it was closed for renovation. Other than walking through the pretty clobber stone streets of the city center or wandering through the hilly communities of the city residents while taking in the panoramic view of the city, there was not much to do in Tana and it was soon time to head to the airport to catch my flight to the Comoros.