Devastated Mayotte battles to recover from cyclone ‘steamroller’

The cyclone left scenes of utter devastation – Copyright AFP DIMITAR DILKOFF

Thibault Marchand

The district of La Vigie on the French overseas territory of Mayotte was until last week a bustling hub of life. Now it no longer exists.

All that remains after Cyclone Chido rammed into Mayotte at the weekend, leaving devastation unprecedented in the last century in its wake, are ravaged hills, piles of tangled sheet metal and wood, and a few bare tree trunks.

“It was like a steamroller that crushed everything,” said Nasrine, a teacher who did not give her last name, as she showed people around her now transformed neighbourhood.

Climbing up the hill clutching an umbrella to protect her from the sun, the young woman stopped in horror.

“We’re not supposed to see the sea from here — before, the vegetation covered the whole view,” she said.

Nasrine lived in one of the few concrete buildings in the district around Pamandzi, a town close to Mayotte’s main airport on the island of Petite Terre, just east of the main island of the Mayotte archipelago.

Her house survived the cyclone. But a little further on, Touharati Ali Moudou lost everything. 

“The wind knocked down the house,” said the mother in her 30s, who recently arrived from the Comoros to the north from where many immigrants head to Mayotte in search of a better life.

Before the cyclone hit, she had been told that she could find shelter in a nearby gymnasium but, she said, “there were a lot of people, and my father is very old”. 

So they stayed home.

In the end, they were lucky: only two people were injured among her family and nearby neighbours, including a man whose head was slashed by a piece of metal blown by the wind.

– Community spirit –

Everyone, from Mayotte locals to officials far away in Paris, knows that the official toll of 22 dead risks rising exponentially.

“What I fear is that the toll will be far too high,” French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, who visited Mayotte on Monday, told BFMTV, describing the damage as “colossal”.

Communication is almost non-existent. Nobody has television anymore. The mobile network and internet are at best patchy, at worst non-existent. Only the radio can sometimes give snippets of information.

With much of the population living in shanty towns in informal dwellings protected only by sheet metal roofs, Chido encountered few obstacles.

But a ray of hope comes from the sense of community as people team up to clear the area and return to a semblance of normal life. 

In three days, the landscape of desolation has already changed.

“It looks good compared to Saturday,” Nasrine said. 

Residents of the neighbourhood worked to clear the roads and remove most of the electrical cables on the ground, defying the authorities’ instructions for caution, she said.

The assistant principal of a middle school in Pamandzi, Morgane Renard, inspected the damage. 

The shock caused by Chido was clear in her voice, which choked when talking about the cyclone: the first gust of wind, the slight lull and then the second “colossal” gust of wind.

“Even those who thought they were safe did not imagine to what extent the violence of the wind could devastate everything,” she said, acknowledging she was one of the lucky ones. 

Apart from two trees that fell on her family house, it is intact.

“Sharing is the key word at the moment,” said Nasrine. 

In the street, neighbours meet to cook with wood on makeshift equipment. Abeta, a 17-year-old boy, improvised a system with a water bottle cut in half to collect water drop by drop from a leaking pipe.

– Reconstruction –

Touharati Ali Moudou showed a pile of mattresses, blankets and a few belongings saved from the disaster. She has already put men to work to create a new dwelling and on a roughly flat piece of land posts have already been raised.

The sheet metal will soon be back, first for the roof: she will get a home for herself, her three children and the nieces and nephews who she sometimes looks after.

All over Mayotte, informal settlements that house an estimated 100,000 of the 300,000 officially registered inhabitants have been destroyed. 

Reconstruction will be daunting. According to Retailleau, only 10 percent of Mayotte’s inhabitants had insurance.

Kaweni, the largest shantytown in France, on the outskirts of the capital Mamoudzou on Mayotte’s main island, is one of the most affected.

The sound of hammers hitting sheet metal reverberates across the neighbourhood as locals rush to rebuild homes before the rainy season arrives.

“It’s the new sound of Mamoudzou,” said a law student who came to the capital where the network is more stable to recharge his phone and give news to his parents who “thought he was dead”.