“Hale!” “Halele!”
Long ago, the elders say, the archipelago had not four islands but five. The fifth was called Mjombi. It lay far to the south-east, between Mayotte and the Great Island, Madagascar.
It was a happy land. Its people were fishermen and merchants; they spoke several languages, for their families came from Arabia, India and Madagascar. Their dhows came and went between the coasts, laden with rice, cloth and dried fish.
But one day, the sea rose. It climbed higher than the trees, higher than the roofs, and covered the whole island. Only a few inhabitants, who were out at sea or had time to flee in their canoes, survived to tell of the disaster.
Since then, the island has slept beneath the waters. Sailors passing over the shoal called Mdjumbi throw a coin into the sea, to ask the djinns of the ocean to let them pass safely.
What we know about it
The myth of the “fifth island” is widespread in the archipelago. The name Mdjumbi refers in Comorian to a shoal in the Mozambique Channel, which nautical charts call the Castor Bank.
No trace of an inhabited, sunken island is known at this spot. The tale does, however, recall the importance of the sea, its dangers and its spirits in the lives of Comorian sailors, and the memory of mixed populations, such as the Antalaotra, Muslim merchants of the Malagasy coast.
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.
- Outside view Claude Allibert, Mayotte, plaque tournante et microcosme de l'océan Indien occidental : son histoire avant 1841, 1984. Anthropos.