The Mahorais Syndrome

Haïdar is a young forty-something from Mayotte, a predominantly Muslim French island, located between East Africa and Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean. And Haïdar is not very happy! His Mahorais compatriots voted overwhelmingly for departmentalization in March 2009 and he does not want this departmentalization! He wants to find the Mayotte where life is good and not this island which is inexorably tilting towards the "French" model. He thinks that the Comorian culture, common to the four islands of the archipelago, will inevitably be deconstructed in Mayotte, or even destroyed by the French "assimilationist steamroller". So Haïdar decided to go live in the Comoros, where he can find his "real" life. But Haïdar will go from surprise to surprise because although thousands of Comorians come every year to settle illegally in Mayotte, the reverse suddenly seems much more difficult than he had imagined.