“Hale!” “Halele!”
In the heart of Ndzuwani, where the forest climbs towards Mount Ntringui, you have to walk a long way to reach Lake Dzialandzé. The path is steep, the air grows cool, and the mist often comes down over the dark water, so that you hear the lake before you see it.
The elders say that this is no ordinary water. Spirits live there. For some, they are evil djinns lying in wait for the reckless; for others, they are guardians who protect the source of life for the whole island, the rivers that flow down to the villages and the crops.
So when you reach the lakeshore, you speak quietly. You greet the masters of the place, as you greet people on entering a house. And above all, no one swims there: that would disturb those who dwell in the depths. At dusk, when the great fruit bats leave the trees and fly over the water, children say that the spirits are coming out to make their rounds.
What we know about it
Dzialandzé is a crater lake at an altitude of about 910 m, on the slopes of Mount Ntringui, the highest point on Anjouan. It is considered a sacred place: swimming there is strongly discouraged, and traditions place spirits there, evil or protective depending on the version.
Like Dziani in Mayotte or Lac Salé on Grande Comore, it shows how closely crater lakes, rare and mysterious, are associated with the invisible world. The surrounding forest is home to Livingstone's fruit bat, a giant bat found only on Anjouan and Mohéli. Read: Lake Dzialandzé and Mount Ntingui.
Further reading
- Voices of the archipelago Mohamed Ahmed-Chamanga (textes recueillis et traduits par), Rois, femmes et djinns : contes de l'île d'Anjouan, 1988. Centre de recherche Océan Indien (Paris).
- Outside view J.-C. Hébert, Fêtes agraires dans l'île d'Anjouan (archipel des Comores), 1960. Journal de la Société des africanistes, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 101–116.