Mayotte | A week after Cyclone Chido, residents are still waiting for help

(Mamoudzou) “We are thirsty. We are hungry”: faced with aid arriving in dribs and drabs, the inhabitants of Mayotte are growing impatient despite the return of running water supply in the capital of the French archipelago in the Indian Ocean, a week after the devastation wreaked by the cyclone Desire.

On this first day of the weekend, many residents are queuing in front of ATMs or at the checkouts of supermarkets which are starting to reopen, as are several gas stations.

Although emergency aid is still awaited in several parts of the archipelago, water was distributed in Mamoudzou and many residents returned home, a pack of bottles held at arm's length or on their heads, noted an AFP journalist on Saturday morning.

Until December 27, households in Mamoudzou will only have access to water for eight hours, two days out of three while outside temperatures exceed 30 degrees.

President Emmanuel Macron had promised Friday evening at least partial connection of homes to water from Saturday, after having been confronted for two days with the distress of the Mahorais.

While he assured several local media that he was dealing with “the emergency”, the head of state also warned that “for months, Mayotte will not live in a normal situation”.

In terms of emergency accommodation, the NGO Acted indicated on Saturday in a press release that it had “chartered a special cargo plane to transport” to the archipelago “a first batch of 700 tents which should be operational on the ground for Christmas Day”, to accommodate “nearly 5,000 people […] in the most destroyed territories.

“A sandwich a day”

In Mayotte, the provisional toll from the cyclone stands at 35 dead and 2,500 injured, including 78 seriously, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of the Interior.

But “it is likely that there are many more victims,” recognized Emmanuel Macron, recalling that a mission had been carried out to establish an exact toll.

The cyclone also caused other victims in southern Africa: 76 deaths in Mozambique, 13 in Malawi, according to the latest reports.

In the La Geôle district, in Mamoudzou, Shalima took advantage of this first day of water at the public pumps on Saturday to come with other women to wash her clothes in a parking lot.

“We took everything that was flooded and we came to wash it,” said this 30-year-old shopkeeper, a large basin of clean water and a small one for washing next to her: “It feels good to moral. Because the clothes we have here are the same ones since last Friday. The next step is being able to eat. They bring us a sandwich a day, but it’s not enough,” says this woman who has not seen any state representative since the cyclone.

In this mixed neighborhood of precarious housing and concrete houses, Adjilani Asadi has not seen any civil servant in a week either: “We drink the water from the cisterns, but it is salty. There is no choice, otherwise we will die.”

Those who lived in tin shacks have already rebuilt theirs. Unlike slums like Kawéni, there is more space here and some look like real households.

Controversy

“In public order, for the moment things are completely contained. The Mahorais are not engaged in actions of violence or looting,” Mamoudzou public prosecutor Yann Le Bris told AFP on Saturday.

On Friday, Emmanuel Macron went to Tsingoni, a landlocked town in the west of Grande-Terre, the main island of the archipelago. Far from Mamoudzou, help, water, electricity and food were always slow to arrive.

“Already 80 tons of food and 50 tons of water were distributed in nine municipalities yesterday,” the resigning Minister of the Interior Bruno Retailleau said on Friday, assuring that “everything is in place to enable the distribution of 600,000 liters of water per day”, or a little less than two liters per person.

Around a third of the population of Mayotte, or more than 100,000 inhabitants, particularly people in an irregular situation coming from neighboring Comoros, live in precarious housing.

“Putting an end” to slums and “removing” these “unworthy” and “dangerous” habitats is one of the objectives of the special law promised by the president to “rebuild” Mayotte. Prime Minister François Bayrou has set a potential deadline of two years for this reconstruction.