Three weeks ago, Cyclone Chido devastated Mayotte. The after-effects are still serious: more than a third of the population is still without electricity on January 2, according to the Ministry of the Interior, and distribution of food and water remains necessary. The impact of this disaster could, however, have been limited, according to Saïd Saïd Hachim. The geographer assures that he did everything to alert the authorities and residents before the arrival of the cyclone.
The day before the disaster, Saïd Saïd Hachim took his car and went to Sada and Chiconi to give advice to the elected officials of these two municipalities. At 5:30 p.m., he joined Mamoudzou and sheltered his family, then went to television, on Mayotte la 1ère for an hour of air time. THE geographer then comes up against the nonchalance and carelessness of people. “Every time I said: 'Be careful, barricade yourself, take precautions because this cyclone is going to be very, very strong', people didn't believe it.“, he laments again.
“We feel like we all participated in this, because maybe we didn’t say it loud enough, not enough.”
Saïd Saïd Hachim, geographerFrance Culture
It is also as a father that Saïd Saïd Hachim is distressed. “My son Younès has a friend he has been looking for for two weeks. He just lived in a slum. Fifteen days, can you imagine that? I don't want him to think he's no longer there“, he worries. So he borrows his strategy from the actor Roberto Benigni to spare his son, and imagines himself as the hero of the film Life is beautiful. “We have to lie. I'm acting to protect him. We tell them lots of stories, full of hope.“
For Saïd Saïd Hachim, the situation says a lot about the treatment of Mayotte by the French authorities. “Men are injured, are destroyed. It is not the material reconstruction that is important, it is the reconstruction of souls“, he believes. However, for him, this restoration cannot be achieved without collective awareness.
“Chido exposed the state lie. Hypocrisy, blurted the geographer. How can you explain that people crowd into neighborhoods where they have no identity? How can we tolerate such indignity? This institutionalized injustice, Chido revealed it“. Just as the cyclone revealed the bangas, these makeshift dwellings in the countryside, invisible by vegetation before the gusts of December 14.
