“We urgently need help“. Facing the Doujani district in Mayotte, “completely destroyed“, Naouelle Bouabbas is launching a distress call. Just last week, hundreds of homes stood here. Precarious huts. Corrugated iron for the walls, wooden beams for the structure. Now, only ruins remain. A ghost village. “Blown away”, by the whirlwind of Cyclone Chido.
“It’s crazy what we’re experiencing here”
“There are no more lives to save here“, laments this practitioner in a hospital environment. The hardest part begins for the survivors: counting the dead. Alone. “Nothing is in place to look for people under the rubble“, s’enrage Naouelle.
An anger shared by Iri, a Mahorais student who grew up in the Kaweni district, nicknamed “the largest slum in France“. A district which is now combined with the past: “All day long, we searched for people in the rubble“, he rewinds, his tone serious.
He insists: “There were deaths. I know someone who took a piece of sheet metal to his stomach. The cut gutted him“.Rescue?”They don’t go up to the heights. We manage between us to clear the road“, he laments.
“They set up a tent at Mamoudzou hospital. We’re trying to take the wounded there. Earlier, I was in the car with an almost dead man. It’s crazy what we’re experiencing here“.
The lack of resources resonates all the way to Naouelle, to Doujani. “Currently, there is nothing in place to search for people under the rubble. I took in a woman who hasn’t drunk for 3 days and who is on the street, who has lost everything. Which is the case for thousands of people“.
Survive the chaos
“Everything we know about Mayotte has disappeared“. Same observation of desolation in the city center of Mamoudzou for Guy, a Congolese asylum seeker in Mayotte. With kilometers of roads in his legs, the father of two children came to scrounge up a few precious network bars near the town hall of the capital.
“Even permanent houses are impactedhe repeats in front of torn roofs. How to sleep and protect our children while we are in the middle of the rainy season“, he is indignant.
Everything has become complicated, exhausting, anxiety-inducing… Fuel? The stations are saturated. Cash? Distributors are under siege. Water? Food? Soap…”The stores are empty. We can’t even find salt“, s’alarme Guy.
A shortage which also worries supermarket consumers who flock to the shelves en masse. “Nothing is in place to distribute food and drink to them“, regrets Naouelle Bouabbas. Consequence: “There is looting in stores and pharmacies“, she warns.
On an island with an already scorching social climate, the fear of conflagration is palpable. A concern put into perspective by Iri. “Slum delinquents? They are now merged into the mass of galley slaves. I think many are traumatized. Most of them never sleep in permanent houses. They lost loved ones. For now, it’s as if Chido had reset the counters to zero“.
While waiting for real assistance, the young man relies almost only on himself and his loved ones. Or at least those who are no longer missing.
