BBCThe night Cyclone Chido hit the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, Zinedine was in his home, a small house made of corrugated iron and wood where he lives with eight of his relatives.
Zinedine had received a warning from the authorities about the cyclone, but he didn’t take it too seriously.
“I thought it would be like previous years when they warned of a cyclone but there would only be a little rain. So we stayed home.”
This time, however, winds of more than 200 km/h threatened to hit the island – the strongest cyclone to hit the island in almost a century
French officials said 31 people have died so far and thousands more feared missing.
When another, more urgent cyclone warning came through, Zinedine swung into action.
“I told my mom that it’s never happened before that they sent a message like that, so I think this time it’s serious.”
He suggested they go to their neighbors, a brick house not far from his, in a poor neighborhood high in the hills of Mayotte’s Petite Terre, the smaller of the two islands.
But his mother didn’t want to go and he felt he had to stay home with his family. The 20-year-old tourism student is the oldest boy in his family and feels responsible for them.
When the storm began, he and his mother hid his younger siblings under a table. Then there was a loud noise.
“The iron roof of our house flew off. We panicked and sought shelter. Sheets of iron, wood and other large objects flew everywhere.”
He was walking his siblings to the neighbor’s cabin when he turned around and noticed his mother hadn’t followed him.
“I decided to go back outside to get my mother, even though it was dangerous because of the wind and everything. I would rather die than let my mother die.”
His mother stood in the middle of her damaged home, holding a one-year-old baby. She was very scared and wouldn’t let go of the baby. Zinedine snatched him from her arms and ran to hand him to the neighbors. Eventually he had to carry his mother out of the house.
“Luckily we are all safe, but we have lost everything. The only thing we could save were our papers and diplomas.”
Now he is trying to rebuild his family home. Due to high demand, finding new building materials in Mayotte is currently incredibly difficult and he couldn’t afford a new roof for his house, so he tracked down some of the corrugated iron sheets that were blown away in the storm and plans to reinstall them. Use them.
“I try to do what I can. Even though I’m not a contractor, I want to do it myself because I don’t know if the authorities will help us.”
Across Mayotte, others like Zinedine are trying to do the same, hearing the sound of hammers late into the night.
But as resourceful as the people of Mayotte are, they are also angry about the lack of support they say they have received from the government.
During French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the islands on Thursday He was booed when he tried to give a speech. When he visited a hospital, the frustrated staff complained that they were overwhelmed.
Most of the people we spoke to in Mayotte had not yet received government assistance five days after the cyclone.
“We only received donations of food from volunteers who also gave us clothes and water. The mayor’s office tried to help a little, but that was it,” said 18-year-old mother of three Yasmine Moussa.
Shortly after receiving the storm warning on Friday afternoon, she took her three boys, the youngest of whom is just three months old, to the nearest animal shelter, a secondary school near Labattoir.
“On the day of the cyclone, my children cried because of the noise. When we looked outside we saw corrugated iron roofs flying everywhere. They kept asking me what was wrong, why everything was broken,” she said.
“I told them it was just wind and rain, but the next day when they saw everything was destroyed. They couldn’t sleep that night.”
When she walked home, she could barely recognize her own neighborhood.
“During the storm, mango trees had fallen and were blocking the roads. My neighbor had to point out my house because I couldn’t even recognize it. There was water everywhere, the toilet was broken, my TV, everything was ruined.” I tried to save what I could.
“I had tears in my eyes, I never thought this would happen.”
Now she has nowhere else to go. She says the conditions at the shelter are decent, but she needs a house to bring her children to. They now sleep on mattresses in one of the school’s classrooms along with a dozen other families.
“It’s not normal to sleep like that. The doors cannot be locked and sometimes strangers come in. I worry about my children’s safety and that they will try to steal from us.”
The Red Cross told the BBC that at least 100,000 people were in emergency shelters around Mayotte.
President Macron has promised compensation to the uninsured, who make up the majority of the population, but he has not said how much they will get.
The need is huge: almost all islands have to be rebuilt. However, some on the political right in France argue that spending too much money in Mayotte will only lead to more undocumented migrants coming to French territory.
Back in La Vigie, Zinedine says he understands her objections, but disagrees.
“At the end of the day, we are human. And we need help.”
