In 1978 I was sent to the Comoro Islands for my work, the most exotic place I have ever been to in my life. I was a telecommunications engineer for Cable and Wireless in London. The Grand Comoro island was originally a French possession and when they became independent there were no engineers to maintain and renovate the radio communication systems to provide worldwide telephone and data communications, so they sent me out to Moroni, the capital, to help install a new solid state Racal 10 kW radio transmitter and rhombic antenna to provide a link to the satellite earth station in Bahrain. The original equipment used valves (tubes) and they were deteriorating with only a few watts of power output instead of kilowatts, so they needed to be replaced, and with a better higher gain antenna such as a rhombic. I was there for 3 weeks, and flew in an out of Kenya (Mombasa and Nairobi) to get there and to come back. It was an orthodox Islamic country, with the people speaking Comorien, a mixture of Swahili, French and Arabic. I got by speaking French. The people were very nice and friendly and gave me gifts when I left. The island was tropical with beautiful beaches and a huge volcano with one of the biggest craters in the world, very high above the clouds. The island at the time was very run down and poor. I am sure it has changed for the better, but from this video after some 35 years or so, it doesnt look as if it has changed all that much and areas still look run down. At the time I was there, malaria was very bad and I saw many cases of that. I had to take anti-malaria pills and had many vaccinations before I left. I had no piano to play on and just relied on listening to cassette recordings. All I could hear on the radio was chanting and Arabic music. https://youtube/watch?v=w2DFaMXAueo
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 13:25:16 +0000