Mamoudzou, Mayotte — French President Emmanuel Macron visited the Mayotte archipelago in the Indian Ocean on Thursday to study the situation. the devastation caused by Cyclone Chido throughout France as thousands of people tried to get by without the bare necessities, such as water or electricity.
“Mayotte is demolished,” an airport security agent told Macron as soon as he got off the plane.
Security guard Assane Haloi said his family members, including young children, are without water or electricity and have nowhere to go after the strongest cyclone in nearly a century that ravaged the French territory of Mayotte, off the African coast, on Saturday.
KWEZI/AFP/Getty
“There is no roof, there is nothing. No water, no food, no electricity. We can’t even shelter ourselves, we are all wet with our children, covering ourselves with everything we have to be able to sleep,” she said, asking for emergency help. help.
Macron took a helicopter tour of the damage and was due to spend Thursday evening in the remote French territory. After flying over the destruction, he went to the hospital in Mamoudzou, the capital of Mayotte, to meet medical staff and patients.
Wearing a traditional Mayotte scarf over his white shirt and tie, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the French president listened to people asking for help. A medical staff member told him that some people had not drunk water for 48 hours.
Some residents also expressed anguish over not knowing those who had died or were still missing, in part because of the Muslim practice of burying the dead within 24 hours.
LUDOVIC MARIN/PISCINE/AFP/Getty
“We are dealing with open-air mass graves,” Mayotte MP Estelle Youssoufa told the press. “There are no rescuers, no one has come to recover the buried bodies.”
Some survivors and aid groups described rushed burials and the stench from the bodies.
Macron acknowledged that many deaths had not been reported. He said phone services will be repaired “in the coming days” so people can report missing loved ones.
French authorities said at least 31 people died and more than 1,500 people were injured, more than 200 seriously. But it is feared that hundreds, if not thousands, of people have died in total.
Abdou Houmadou, 27, said emergency aid was needed immediately, not Macron’s presence.
“Mr. President, what I would like to tell you… is that I think the spending you made from Paris to Mayotte would have been better spent helping people,” he said.
Another resident, Ahamadi Mohammed, said Macron’s visit “is a good thing because he will be able to see the damage for himself.”
“I think we will then get significant help to try to get the island back on its feet,” the 58-year-old said.
LUDOVIC MARIN/PISCINE/AFP/Getty
Macron’s office said four tons of food and medical aid, as well as additional rescuers, were on board the presidential flight. A national navy ship was due to arrive in Mayotte on Thursday with an additional 180 tonnes of aid and equipment, according to the French army.
Residents of a large slum on the outskirts of Mamoudzou were among the hardest hit by the cyclone. Many lost their homes, some lost friends.
Nassirou Hamidouni took refuge in his house when the cyclone struck.
His neighbor was killed when his house collapsed on him and his six children. Hamidouni and others dug through the rubble to reach them.
This 28-year-old father of five is now trying to rebuild his own house, which was also destroyed.
He believes the death toll is much higher than officially reported, given the severity of what he experienced.
“It was very hard,” he said.
Mayotte, located in the Indian Ocean between the east coast of mainland Africa and northern Madagascar, is the poorest territory in France.
The cyclone devastated entire neighborhoods and many people ignored warnings, thinking the storm would not be so extreme.
Mayotte has more than 320,000 inhabitants according to the French government. Most are Muslim and French authorities estimate that another 100,000 migrants live there.
Mayotte is the only part of the Comoros archipelago that voted to remain part of France in a 1974 referendum.
Over the past decade, the French territory has seen a massive influx of migrants from neighboring islands – the independent nation of Comoros, which is one of the poorest countries in the world.
