50 Hours on Europe's Most Dangerous Island

We're on Europe's most dangerous island, but we probably shouldn't even be here. If you're driving and you see like obstacle on the road, don't stop. Just go. — Mayot, an island that in the most unlikely of ways still belongs to France. Located off the coast of Madagascar, 8,000 km from its mainland, yet fully considered part of the country and of the EU. Their currency is the euro and its inhabitants are French citizens. But somehow, despite it being one of EU's most southern borders, it seems to have gotten completely forgotten. So, after our story surprising our delivery driver, Vakar with a trip to Kenya, we found this island just 2 and 1/2 hours away that frankly none of us knew anything about. While doing some research, we could only find two totally contradicting aspects about this place. First, it seems to be an absolutely stunning tropical paradise. But it also, however, seems to have very high crime rates and thus almost no visitors whatsoever, which only left us with more questions. How is this island actually a part of France and doesn't even feel like the same country? But most importantly, are things really as bad as the news make them out to be? With a place this unknown, we know that the only way to find out what is really going on is to go there. So, we booked a two-day trip to this mysterious island, not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into. — Made the journey to the beginning. — I don't think I've ever known so little about a place that I'm going to in my entire life. — Yeah, we've been on the road for over 2 months and yeah, back to France now. — Like in the middle of Madagascar and continental Africa, there's like France. Makes no sense. It makes no sense. Seems not to be the safest place. And I texted a couple of French friends about it and they said, "I've only seen documentaries about how it's quite dangerous there. " You never know before you go to a place, right? I mean, I've been to Afghanistan and Pakistan and people thought I was going to not come back, right? So, I think it's probably fairly okay, but I think we just have to be a little cautious because we don't really know. Hello. Wow, everyone here seems so freaking friendly. — What did she say? — She asked if we're going to stay on the big island or the small island. — I don't know what that means. I said big one, but I don't I have no idea. Actually, we should have probably looked into this more. — There's no turning back now. — Let's see how this goes. It's like paradise. This is not what I thought it was going to look like. Oh my god, it's so beautiful. Welcome to France. — Thank you so much. Thank you. We go from Asantas Sana to me. I have no idea where we are and there's barely anyone here at this airport. Okay, it was around this moment that we began to realize how very little we knew about this place due to our limited planning. Literally none of the rental car websites worked. I could not find a rental car place. I uh think we're on a small island, too. I looked at the map. Wait, what the — So, we're on this small one that's like next to the big one, — and our hotel is on the other side. — So, we have to take like a ferry, maybe. — How do we get to the ferry? — You know when you enter a place and everyone knows you're a tourist? This is us right now. — Apparently, the boat to the other island, the ferry, cost €1. Mercy. — Hello. — Unlocked a new corner of the map, though. I've never been in this general area at all. It's wild to be this far, but still not be in a new country. Well, you can go this far away from the mainland of the country and still be in that country. — And why is it like that? — It must not be a really dark history related to that, right? — Yeah. — Cut to voice over explaining more. May is an island between Madagascar and the coast of East Africa and sits around 8,000 kilometers away from mainland France. And somehow they are the same country. For centuries, May was a part of a network of trade routes influenced by African, Arab, and Malagasi cultures. The island was governed by Muslim leaders, and the people lived freely, moving to the rhythm of the Indian Ocean. But everything changed in the

1800s. At the time, European powers were racing to expand their influence across the globe. And in 1841, a local ruler made a decision that could reshape May forever. Facing internal conflict and outside pressure, the Sultan of Mayut sold the island to France. And just like that, May became French. Over the following decades, France tightened its grip, eventually taking control of the entire Kumora's archipelago, grouping May with its neighboring islands under colonial rule. Fast forward to the 1970s. A wave of independence movements swept across Africa. The Kamoros voted for independence from France. But Mayott did something unexpected. It chose to stay. Not once, but multiple times through referendums, the people of Matut voted to remain French, separating their path from the rest of the Kamoros, which became an independent nation. And today, May isn't just connected to France. It is France, an overseas department governed under French law. Thousands of kilometers away from mainland Europe, we continue the track to our accommodation by following these locals to the ferry. — I literally am just following them. I have no idea where we're going. — It truly feels like a little tropical paradise. And once on the mainland, we continued to search for a rental car, but ran into further difficulties. tourism bureau is closed. — We hadn't realized that we had arrived on May during Ramadan. And it turns out that around 95% of the population on the island were Muslim, meaning that right now at 3:30 p. m., most businesses had closed for the day. — She was like, "No, man. I'm done. I'm going home. " She — giving you a number to call? — No, I'm calling another rental place. Okay. — Trying next place. on the car. — Yay! — Our vehicle. — And now, after struggling to find our way, we were finally ready to see where this unusual adventure would take us. — They have like this white paint on their faces. — The goats. — Traffic here. — Traffic jam. Who do they belong to? — As we headed to our accommodation for the night, we had no idea how we would immerse ourselves these next few days to understand more about this island's interesting mix of cultures. We still don't have any plan. The plan is to find the plan or for the plan to find us. This looks like a nice market here. — Yeah, looks like they're selling all sorts of stuff. I don't know. People are looking at us like aliens. Like, what the are these guys doing in here? — Nice. Police. Okay. Right. Okay. He's saying there's like little groups of boys and that hang out scanning and waiting and seeing what they can get up to. Yeah. They might throw rocks. They might have other weapons. She's saying she does not want to be filmed. This is going to be difficult, I think. Well, I guess we're going to have to see what we're going to do here. I'll admit that this place is a little bit more unpredictable than we originally expected. And one thing that's been a bit out of control and challenging everywhere we travel has been taking out cash in various ATMs and my bank hitting me with outrageous conversion fees. And being out here in May in the middle of the Indian Ocean has definitely made that very clear. And so many of my friends and actually direct family were telling me to stop complaining about this and to just use Revolute. So I

finally downloaded it. Revolute, the sponsor of this video, is a financial app used by over 70 million people worldwide. It basically gives you way more flexibility when you're dealing with money internationally. You can hold money in 25 different currencies at the same time, spend in local currencies and exchange between them directly in the app at really good rates. So whether I'm out here in my yat in Pakistan or in Kenya, I'm not constantly losing money on conversions anymore. Let me show you. Inside of the app, you can instantly exchange currencies at the market exchange rates instead of whatever markup your bank decides to add. You can also send money internationally to over 140 countries just using someone's Revolute name or phone number. A lot of our friends already use it, which makes splitting costs while traveling way easier. If they are also on Revolute, you can send it in seconds with no fees. If you want to try it out, you can get $40 when you sign up using the link in the description. Their standard plan has no monthly fees and it only takes minutes to create an account. Honestly, if you travel a lot or if you move between countries regularly like we do, it makes life so much easier. Money freedom wherever you are. And now back to seeing what we can explore safely on this island. — That was interesting. — Yeah, that was uh that was that was harder than we expected. — Yeah, that was very hard. Maybe markets is not the way to do this. It's hard, you know, because we have no like rule map to follow, right? when you go to a country, well, the country is France, but when you go to an island like this that is less traveled, we're like ping the way right now hopefully to be able to show others, but we don't know how to do this. Another thing the policeman said is like there's no age limit to uh to crime. He basically said if you see these little groups of boys hanging around like they're looking for something to do and he was like they might have knives or machetes or things like that. Do you think people like the police? Okay. But the mission is maybe then to like yeah actually find someone who can be our guardian angel. Of course, we don't want to like fear humans and fear strangers. It goes against everything what we believe in. But it's also good to be mindful. After driving around and checking out the surrounding towns, we stopped by a small pharmacy to grab some sunscreen where we were met with someone who would end up changing the course of our trip. — And how long have you been in Miami? — Uh, 7 months. — Okay. So, pretty new. — Yeah, pretty new. — Have you seen a little bit of the island yourself? — Yeah. Yes. — So far. — Uh, mixed. — Mixed. Yes. because you have a lot of uh insecurity and now it's pretty calm because uh people are fasting and sometime during the evening uh you can have a we call them uh match. Uh so this is why uh it's a little bit complicated to drive during the night. You need to gather information. Jesse then continued to explain to us how insecure living on May was and the complicated reality we had flown ourselves into. — You can have like a two months calm and then you will have a one month where is a lot of insecurity all over the — Why does the insecurities go up sometimes? What is the main reason too? — Uh sometime politics other time is because you have they call it alliance between villages. So Jesse, it's like kind of serious but like this sometime it's very complicated to understand what's going on. — Despite having the appearance of a beautiful tropical island, Jesse was beginning to shine light on how Mayot had struggled with its crime rate in recent years. Much of the violence stems from neighborhood and village-based gangs of young boys, some as young as 12, who carry out territorial attacks on rival areas with innocent bystanders often getting severely injured or killed in the chaos. However, there are many factors that contribute to the high crime rates that the locals have no control over. Firstly, with an unemployment rate of 30% and 80% of the people living in poverty, May is by far the poorest department in France with local politicians campaigning for France to provide more infrastructure to the island. Secondly, Mayott also has a huge problem with undocumented immigrants, many of whom sail over from neighboring islands in search of a better life. And finally, children born of undocumented immigrant parents land in a legal gray area in terms of their nationality, which can make it harder to attend school, access healthcare, and find legal work. All these factors lead to an increase in people being drawn into crime. According to Jesse, our chances of encountering any trouble are lower right now because of Ramadan. But she warned us that getting attacked while driving on a remote was still a major risk. And if you're driving and you see like a group that has put obstacle on the road, then you just need to drive very fast. Don't stop. Just go

— like through the obstacle. — Yes. Through the obstacle. How long are you planning to stay? — We're staying until Sunday afternoon. — Oh, — for just a few days. — You're free. It's okay. — It's okay now. So, — yeah, you should come explore with us. — Oh, no worries. Yeah, sure. Get me your Instagram. So, so tomorrow morning at 8 a. m. there is a big market. It's once a month. — So, you need to go there. — Oh, yeah. — Maybe we can go together. — Okay. Sure. I'm planning to go there. So, I will text you. — Okay. Amazing. — Okay. So, nice to meet you. — So This is fun. — Yeah. You too, Jessie. Thank you. — I think we met our guardian angel in a pharmacy. — Okay. This is a good time to tell people don't do what we do. I was just going to say that actually like you need to — you need to look into read more honestly like — she's going to a market tomorrow morning — at 8 a. m. — once a month. — Yeah. — So maybe we bring our small cameras and go join her. — Yeah. I'm I I often have words to say but right now I'm a bit you know and obviously 99% of people all around the world are always kind of lobbying but it's just if you're in a little specific corner at the wrong place in time. — Yeah. She did say that. Yeah. specifically. There's three people that have told me we're lucky we're here during Ramadan because people are fasting. — Yeah. — They're like a bit, you know, they're in the shade, they're at home, like they don't have as much energy. But she said after school, during the school periods, kids are waiting on the side of the road and just throwing rocks at cars. — Contrasting. — Yeah. Feel me in a lot of updates. — Yeah. — Her bio on Instagram is I'm a dreamer. A world citizen. She's a dreamer. She's not the only one. — You, me, and her, we are like dreamers, you know? You know what I mean? You, me, and her, we are like dreamers. Like, we dream. And — Oh. Oh, — did you forget that I was here? As we ended our day with a swim in this tropical rainy paradise, we couldn't help but reflect on a day that hadn't quite gone to plan. In our search to meet locals, we'd mainly encountered more concerns about the dangers of exploring this island unaccompanied. So, we were eager to meet up with Jesse in the next morning to explore the island's famous market. — Ah, hi. So — the French greeting it's always it always gets there. — What is this market? — So this one is like a famous market. You will have a once a month. — Okay. — So it will gather all the people from Mayot. They will come from all over the place. — Thanks for taking us. We've been a little bit lost in May. Yeah. You've been our savior so far. This is nice. The energy here is very chill. Feels like people are just selling their local crafts and food. Okay. After 7 months like what's the essence of Mayot would you say like after being here — the people you need a little bit time because they will not open at the first month two months maybe it can take 4 months before they opens to you. — Yeah. — But after that you are like a family to them. So that's great. Wow. — So we have to be here for 4 months. Yeah. At least. Okay. At least four months. One of the main obstacle in Mayard is that it's a French territory but they have another language. So most of the people they don't speak French. — Most people Yeah. — What language do they speak? — Shim is the local language. — Local language. Shim. — Shimo. — And I read that in 1974. The rest of Kamaros voted to be independent. — Yes. But not here. — No. Do you know if people are happy with that decision or are they like wishing they were independent? — No. People from Maya they are very happy that you will have a lot of migration people from Kong will come here uh to seek nationality. They want to be French again. Locals are not happy with that. When you arrive there, they will say most of the time that people from Mayot are very racist against people from Koma because sometime they can use harsh words and it's sad because they're like cousin. — It's the same family. — Yeah. — And they are treating each other like strangers. — I don't get that. So it's painful to watch. Jesse, can you explain to us what a futari is? — The futari is uh meals that you will share with people after fasting during the Ramadan period. — So you told us about one. — Yeah. It's a colleagues of my friends. — Okay. — So they are going to organize it tonight. — Yes. You need to go there.

— I'm getting photos — from your friend here. We have been invited to the thing we've been looking for. They cook food for the breaking of the fast, which happens tonight. So, we're going to go check it out. Somehow, as we strolled around this market, Jesse had contacted a distant connection who was hosting one of the most local experiences we could ask for. A futari where a village will prepare for days, sometimes for their whole neighborhood to break their fast together. Jesse couldn't join us herself, but sent us an address and a contact, and off we went. We are approaching where the uh preparations are happening. — Is it your family here? — Yeah. — Oh, wow. — And wow. Something we hadn't expected to discover on the trip was that Mayott's culture was actually heavily matriarchal. Property and homes are often passed down through women, and it's common for men to move into the household of their wife's family after marriage. This tradition has roots in Camorian culture, where lineage, inheritance, and social stability are closely tied to women. Mothers and grandmothers often act as the anchors of the household, making key decisions and maintaining the structure of daily life. The social fabric here gives women a unique form of influence and security, something rarely seen in many parts of the world. feels like we're we've been struggling finding our way in and they've totally invited us here. for a tradition. — I don't know why I got touched now, but like it's their preparation for Christmas, right? Like it's — Yeah. — How can we help out? She said it'd be funny to watch you grill. I don't know how to grill. I know you don't. Why are you offering to do things you don't know how to do? Hello. Hello. Gosh. Wholesome there, Junior. Oh, — nice to meet you. — And by some miracle, we found ourselves in the very heart of a local community. — I survived. — He was like, "Are you doing Ramadan? " I was like, "No. " He was like, "Then you can eat. Have some. Okay. Ah, perfect. Protect his little Rudolph's nose. Here we go. Feeling like a local. Yeah, I can't see any other men. They said men have it as well, but I think they maybe tricked me. time of breaking fast is approaching. They have all of these different meals that have been prepared in different homes and everyone is now coming together. — I am the best. — It is pretty incredible. They've been telling me that back in the day they

used to do this a lot more without any particular occasion just sharing meals together. But um it's becoming less and less common just as society is sort of modernizing and individualistic ways of life is becoming more and more the norm. So it's quite beautiful to see them doing it here now. And for a lot of the elders this is very meaningful because this is how they remember growing up. A lot of people come up and ask us what we're filming for. They think we're journalists and typically journalists have come here and not necessarily represented people in the kindest of light when they found out that we're here genuinely just to learn about their culture and everyone's super excited that we're here and we feel uh very welcomed by everyone. So this is always the scary part whenever we begin a yes trip. We have no idea what's going to happen, where we're going to end up or who we might meet. And so at some point during the trip, we usually know we found the magic. And being here right now, I think it's quite clear that we did. Okay. — Ah, — my father. — Ah, that's her father. — Yeah. — Really? — This is Jean's dad and uh he has like a famous old school band here on the island. He was the he was part of the first band that was playing electric guitar in May — and he has music here on YouTube — and he said he wants our help cuz he wants the young generation to remember this music cuz now they don't play music like this here anymore. See my red. Oh yeah. Yeah, this young kid here, he's been watching us shoot all day, film all day. The protege that I haven't taught anything. He just learned from watching, but he learned how to focus. hit record. He even said, "Let's shoot it on the red. " — Wow. Everyone is breaking the fast. — Okay. Wow. This is um a very intimate moment. It's quite beautiful. Everyone is sort of seated at different corners here. People from the whole neighborhood and family, friends, neighbors are gathered. our guardian angel. — What do you wish for the future of May? New problem security. If you could whisper something into everyone's ear in my yacht, what would you tell everyone on the island?

Super Mercy. Now she's giving us food to go. We should go. — Okay. Yeah. Yeah. — Unfortunately, as we were just getting comfortable, we had also forgotten that the sun had now set. Locals from the village came rushing to tell us we needed to move. — And he was like, "No, I think you guys need to like hit the road. " And then he looked worried and I was like, "Oh, oh, I get it. " It's hard to say what our real takeaway from this trip was. The first natural one is that especially in places surrounded by lots of pain and instability. There are also always communities and families like Jeans holding each other close. May felt like an island we could spend weeks exploring and still not fully understand. One can only hope that France will prioritize this island more in the future and that smart and kind-hearted people like Jean will continue being a part of planting positive seeds for a brighter future.