By John Eligon, Julie Bourdin and Aurelien Breeden
The hillsides surrounding the harbor of the tiny French territory of Mayotte have been transformed into barren mounds of leafless, uprooted trees. Sailboats lie on their sides, consumed by the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.
Piles of twisted metal, bricks, insulation and other debris line the steep, narrow streets of Mamoudzou, the capital of this archipelago along the east coast of Africa. Amid all this destruction caused by Cyclone Chido, which struck last weekend, a few residents sat on the sidewalk in a downpour Thursday, setting out buckets to capture water, which has become a valuable commodity with taps dry since the storm.
“Tell Macron that God gave us water,” said a shirtless man, raising his arms, referring to French President Emmanuel Macron, who had just arrived to tour the devastation.
As residents pick through the wreckage where dozens have been confirmed dead and thousands may be missing, the deeply impoverished territory of Mayotte is attracting rare global attention and generating renewed debate over its treatment as part of France.
More than a century and a half after France colonized Mayotte, which mainly comprises two larger islands and a series of smaller ones with about 320,000 people, it is the poorest place in France and faces some of the greatest social challenges.
The poverty rate in Mayotte is nearly 80%, five times higher than on the mainland, according to official statistics. The unemployment rate is nearly 40%, compared with about 7% for the rest of France. Some people work in fishing and agriculture, or in an informal economy of small shops and businesses; others are employed by the state.
About 30% of residents do not have access to running water at home, a problem made worse by a drought last year.
Some aid workers and analysts have said the government has failed to keep up with a rapidly growing population and provide necessary services. Others suggest that the government has largely overlooked the island, which sits some 5,000 miles away from mainland France and is a 12-hour flight from Paris.
In the aftermath of the cyclone, Macron has vowed to support the devastated population.
At the airport and then at the hospital Thursday, Macron was greeted by scores of worried residents and exhausted doctors who told him about destroyed homes, power blackouts, low food and medicine stocks, empty gas stations — and worries of a terrible toll.
Macron, who wore a white shirt and a traditional local scarf, was also taken on a helicopter flyover of the devastation. He repeatedly promised that relief was arriving and said that a field hospital would be operational Friday.
For some people living in Mayotte, all the attention and talk of camaraderie coming from mainland France — and Macron’s visit — ring hollow after what they see as decades of discrimination and being cast aside like neglected stepchildren.
“It’s not going to do anything for us,” said Sarah Moilimo, 35, a teacher who is now accommodating about 25 people who lost their homes in her house in Mamoudzou, referring to Macron’s visit. “What we need is for him to act and to do something,” she added. “Over the last few months he’s sent many ministers to visit Mayotte and nothing ever changes.”
Macron rejected suggestions that the French state had abandoned Mayotte and made sweeping promises of recovery during his visit. “We were able to rebuild our cathedral in five years,” Macron said, referring to the recent reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. “It would be a tragedy if we were unable to rebuild Mayotte.”
Even though Mayotte is a part of France, its inhabitants do not enjoy all the same benefits as mainland residents, and they are subject to some different laws.
In Mayotte, families are not entitled to certain grants for child birth and education that are accessible almost everywhere else in France.
Mayotte is one of only two French departments, the basic administrative units within regions, where state representatives can remove residents and destroy illegal housing without a court order. Although the law requires the government to provide suitable alternative accommodation, that often does not happen, according to aid groups.
The shantytowns that have been the focus of the local government’s demolition efforts have taken the hardest hit from the storm, with many wiped away. Many residents of the shantytowns are believed to be undocumented migrants.
The disparities that Mayotte faces are in some ways a legacy of the French colonial era.
Colonized in 1843, Mayotte only became a French department — which establishes a local authority to administer social services and infrastructure — in 2011. It’s the youngest department in the country, and some civil society activists say government officials are still struggling to catch the island up on services and infrastructure amid rapid population growth.
Moilimo, the teacher in Mamoudzou, said she moved to Mayotte about a year and a half ago after living in Marseille her entire life because she wanted to connect with her roots in Africa. She figured Mayotte would be a good landing spot because she could still have the salary and quality of life she had in France.
“It’s not like France at all,” she said, saying the disparities between Mayotte and the mainland were startling.
Even though salaries are much lower in Mayotte, prices are much higher, she said. The education system in Mayotte is so overwhelmed, she said, that many pupils perform far below their grade level. Some students only have the opportunity to go to school for half of the day because of a shortage of teachers.
Part of the reason that Mayotte may have lost so many lives is that cyclones are so rare there that residents often are not aware of the proper precautions to take, said Eric Sam-Vah, the deputy head of the Piroi Center, a disaster management agency of the French Red Cross.
Even though French authorities have warned of a high death toll, residents have complained that government rescue and recovery efforts have been sluggish, and in some cases nonexistent. There was no sign of a government rescue effort during a walk Thursday through many stricken areas of the capital.
During his visit, Macron acknowledged that in many shantytowns there had not yet been searches to find victims, injured and dead, but said officials were ramping up efforts to find victims in these communities.
In many cases, Mayotte residents have had to turn to each other to survive.
After the roof of his two-story, detached villa was torn off by the cyclone, Mickael Damour, 47, was forced to squeeze into a bathroom cupboard to stay safe. He emerged to roads so clogged with debris that he and his neighbors could not leave and were forced to shelter in a school. Damour, a dialysis nurse, said he put his professional skills to work, treating neighbors who could not get to the hospital.
“I bandaged wounds for two days, nonstop,” he said. “We don’t see a lot of aid from the French state.”
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