https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us1000hwxr...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayotte

It's humbling... I feel like a bad citizen of the world for my ignorance of Mayotte. But also optimistic... the world is full of so many amazing places, there's always going to be some next amazing place to learn more about.

I think Attenborough did a documentary a while back on how the introduction of invasive cats, rats, snakes and even spiders would wipe out local fauna on these islands because the local fauna weren't used to predation. Pretty interesting stuff.

Also, the local population of these islands are suffering extreme health issues ( primarily obesity related ) due to all the junk food they are eating.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1533815/

The nature is beautiful for sure, but it isn't all paradise. And we haven't even touched on the impact of global warming on these islands and the fact that some of these islands might have to be evacuated in the next few decades.

https://www.businessinsider.com/islands-threatened-by-climat...

There was one recent article about how a mission to distribute life-saving vaccines had to be abandoned because of a lack of infrastructure and trucks able to get to the villages that need it.

Like a lot of oversea territory, it has some beautiful landscape, but is crippled by the problems above. Living there is very difficult.

EDIT: Note also that I am not blaming immigrant. The problem being that adding more poor people in an already poor territory doesn't solve the problem of poverty. And France unwillingness to treat its oversea territory fairly and really invest in them is the main root of the problem.

So on a very small territory you have a third world country, Comoros, and a piece of the European Union, where, even if it is not on par with continental Europe, has a much higher quality of life.

So there is a quite large influx of immigrants from Comoros, and this is hard to manage for such a small island.

[1] In 1974, France organized a referendum for self-determination in the archipelago in which the population except in Mayotte voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence. Following the unilateral declaration of independence in 1975, France maintained sovereignty over Mayotte. The three remaining islands formed the Etat Comorian, which later became the Federal Islamic Republic of the Comoro Islands.

One of the places that stuck with me the most is Kay Winnie in Seguin. It's a house, built by a man who moved there from the city in order to protect one of the last forests in Haiti. He grows and plants saplings to grow the forest. Unfortunately, you need to hike quite far or drive through incredibly rough terrain to get there.

edit - is worth reading - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/133399.The_Comedians

Yup. And having been there and having spoken to locals and people from the UN, MSF, etc. I don't feel like it's going to change soon. A lot of the economy is driven by NGO's and that money all ends up in the pockets of the rich home, hotel and restaurant owners. Meanwhile the poor sell each other mangos and meat in the streets. It's like there are two completely separate economies. And whenever a politician wants to make a change, tribalism seems to end up ruining it because (often realistic) fear of preferential treatment of some groups.

Sounds eerily similar to the situation things rapidly deteriorate from at the start of the book, which was set 60 years ago now.

> Mayotte is the newest of the five overseas departments having changed from an overseas collectivity, with OCT status, on 31 March 2011. It became an outermost region and thus part of the EU on 1 January 2014.[8]

(though they're allegedly leaving so it won't matter too much anymore)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9union#/media/File:Volca...

And it's Hawaiian style, which means very fluid and low ash, which is the most fun style of volcanoes because it won't really explode (the gas can escape steadily instead of building up pressure) and you can get pretty close during an eruption.

Worst case, your flight is delayed or cancelled and you cannot stay in a specific village. Best case, you get to see an awesome and safe display of natural forces!

Eh? Do seismologists not have FFT signal processing tools at their finger tips.