Mayotte: Survivors describe cyclone horror

Now he’s trying to rebuild his family’s home. Finding new building materials is incredibly difficult in Mayotte at the moment due to high demand, and he couldn’t afford new roofing for his house so he tracked down some of the corrugated iron sheets that were blown off by the storm and plans to re-use them.

“I’m trying 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 across Mayotte, others like Zinedine are attempting to do the same, the sound of hammers ringing late into the night.

But as resourceful as the people of Mayotte are, they’re also angry at the lack of support they say they’ve received from the government.

During French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the islands on Thursday, he was booed whilst trying to make a speech. As he visited a hospital, frustrated staff complained of being overwhelmed.

Most of the people we spoke to when in Mayotte were yet to receive any state aid, five days after the cyclone.

“We’ve only received food donations from volunteers who’ve also given us clothes and water. The mayor’s office tried to help a bit but that’s it” says 18-year-old mother-of-three Yasmine Moussa.

She took her three boys, the youngest of whom is just three months old, to the closest shelter, a secondary school in the neighbourhood of Labattoir, shortly after receiving the storm warning on 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,” she said.

“I said to them it’s just wind and rain but the next day when they saw everything was destroyed. They couldn’t sleep that night.”

When she headed back home, she could hardly recognise her own neighbourhood.