Mayotte: Survivors describe cyclone horror

The night Cyclone Chido hit Mayotte, a French territory in the Indian Ocean, Zinedine was at home, a small house made of corrugated iron and wood where he lives with eight of his relatives.

Zinedine had received a warning from the authorities about the cyclone, but he did not take it too seriously.

“I thought it was like the years before, when they warned that a cyclone was coming but it would just rain a little. So we stayed home.”

This time however, the island was about to be hit by winds of more than 200 km/h – the most powerful cyclone to hit the island in almost a century.

So far, 31 people have died, according to French authorities, and thousands more are feared missing.

When another, more urgent cyclone warning came, Zinedine sprang into action.

“I told my mom it’s never happened before that they send a message like this, so I think this time it’s serious.”

He suggests that they go to their neighbors' house, a brick house not far from his own, in a poor neighborhood on the heights of Petite Terre de Mayotte, the smaller of his two islands.

But his mother didn't want to go and he felt obligated to stay home with his family. This 20-year-old tourism student is the eldest in his family and feels responsible for them.

When the storm started, he and his mother hid his younger siblings under a table. Then there was a loud noise.

“The iron roof of our house flew off. We panicked and looked for shelter. There were sheets of metal, wood and other large objects flying everywhere.”

He took his siblings to the neighbor's cabin when he turned around and noticed his mother hadn't followed him.

“I decided to go back outside to look for my mother even though it was dangerous with the wind and everything. I would rather die than let my mother die.”

His mother stood in the middle of their damaged home, holding a one-year-old baby. She was terrified and didn't want to let the baby go. Zinedine snatched it from her arms and ran to give it to the neighbors. He eventually had to carry his mother out of the house.

“Luckily we are all safe but we lost everything. The only things we were able to save were our papers and our diplomas.”

He is now trying to rebuild his family's house. Finding new building materials is incredibly difficult in Mayotte right now due to high demand, and he couldn't afford a new roof for his house. So he found some of the corrugated iron sheets that were washed away by the storm and plans to reuse them.

“I try to do what I can. Even though I'm not a builder, I want to do it myself because I don't know if the authorities will help us.”

All over Mayotte, others like Zinedine are trying to do the same, to the sound of hammers ringing late into the night.

But as resourceful as Mayotte residents are, they are also unhappy with the lack of support they say they have received from the government.

During French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to the islands on Thursday, he was booed while trying to give a speech. While visiting a hospital, frustrated staff complained of being overwhelmed.

Most of our interlocutors in Mayotte had still not received any aid from the State, five days after the cyclone.

“We only received donations of food from volunteers who also gave us clothes and water. The town hall tried to help us a little but that’s all,” says Yasmine Moussa, 18 years old, mother of three children.

She took her three boys, the youngest just three months old, to the nearest shelter, a high school in the Labattoir neighborhood, shortly after receiving the storm warning Friday afternoon.

“On the day of the cyclone, my children were crying because of the noise. When we looked outside, we saw corrugated iron roofs flying everywhere. They kept asking me what was happening, why everything was breaking,” he said. -she declared.

“I told them it was just wind and rain, but the next day when they saw everything was destroyed. They couldn't sleep that night.”

When she returned home, she could barely recognize her own neighborhood.

“Mango trees had fallen during the storm and were blocking the roads. My neighbor had to show me my house because I didn't even notice it. There was water everywhere, the toilets were broken, my TV, everything was broken. ruin. I tried to save what I could.

“I was in tears, I never imagined this would happen.”

Now she has nowhere to go. She says the conditions at the shelter are decent but she needs a home to take her children. They now sleep on mattresses in one of the school's classrooms with a dozen other families.

“It's not normal to sleep like this. The doors don't close and sometimes strangers come in. I fear for the safety of my children and that they will try to rob us.”

The Red Cross told the BBC there were at least 100,000 people in shelters around Mayotte.

President Macron has promised compensation to the uninsured, who make up the majority of the population, but he has not specified how much they will receive.

The needs are immense: almost all the islands must be rebuilt. But some on the right in France say spending too much money in Mayotte will only encourage more undocumented migrants to come to French territory.

Back in La Vigie, Zinedine says he understands their objections but he does not agree.

“At the end of the day, we're humans. And we need help.”