“Hale!” “Halele!”
A very long time ago, where the lake now lies, there was a village. That year, the dry season seemed never-ending. The cisterns were almost empty, and everyone jealously guarded their store of water.
One scorching day, a stranger came along the path. He was old, covered in dust, and walked with difficulty. He knocked at the first door: “A little water, please, I am dying of thirst.” The door was slammed in his face. He knocked at a second, then a third. Everywhere, the same answer: “We have no water for vagrants.”
At the far end of the village, a poor woman saw him. She had almost nothing, but she filled a calabash and handed it to him. The stranger drank, thanked her, then said to her quietly: “Take your children and your belongings, and leave this village before nightfall. Do not look back.”
The woman obeyed. She set off with her family towards the hills. In the morning, when she came back, the village had vanished: in its place lay a lake of dark, salty water, round as a calabash.
It is said that a man once wanted to measure the depth of the lake: he dived in and never came back up. And it is said that wishes made on its shores come true.
Hospitality is sacred: you never refuse water to someone who is thirsty.
What we know about it
Depending on the version, the stranger is an old man, an old woman, a holy man or a witch. The tale belongs to a family of legends found all over the world: that of the village swallowed up for failing in hospitality.
Lac Salé, also called Niamawi, lies near Bangoi-Kouni, in the north of Grande Comore. For geologists, it is an old volcanic crater flooded with water, very close to the sea. Another legend from the same area tells of a mosque built in a single night: The mosque built in one night.
Further reading
- Voices of the archipelago Salim Hatubou, Contes et légendes des Comores ou Genèse d'un pays bantu, 2004. reissued as Aux origines du monde : contes et légendes des Comores, Flies France, 2015.
- Voices of the archipelago Ahmed Ali Mroimana et Mohamed Ahmed-Chamanga, Contes comoriens de Ngazidja. Au-delà des mers, 1999. L'Harmattan, Archipel des Comores series.