By Tassilo Hummel
MAMOUDZOU (Reuters) – People in storm-devastated Mayotte implored French President Emmanuel Macron to do more to help on Thursday as he toured the overseas territory where dozens of people are feared dead in the rubble left by the cyclone. Chido.
Some in the crowd gathered outside the airport booed the presidential motorcade, while others said they were grateful for Macron’s visit and urged him to stay longer.
French authorities have only been able to confirm 31 deaths more than five days after the cyclone, but some have said they fear there could be thousands. A lawmaker told Macron that some victims had been buried in mass graves. Reuters could not immediately confirm this.
Many areas remain inaccessible. Heavy rains in the capital, Mamoudzou, and other areas have aggravated the plight of thousands of people whose homes in slums were washed away.
As Macron disembarked from a plane carrying food and medical aid, airport workers called for support.
“Take your time. Stay with us. Give us solutions,” an airport security worker named Assane Haloi told him. “Give us emergency help, because in Mayotte there is nothing.”
Macron’s office said he would spend the night on the islands and visit neighborhoods on Friday. Until now it was unclear how long he would remain.
His government has been accused by opposition politicians of neglecting Mayotte, and several residents of impoverished areas told Reuters they had not received any aid since the Chido attack.
“Your services are overwhelmed,” a man at the hospital told Macron in a testy exchange. “Help has not reached where I live.”
Macron said his government would send more support soon, including 400 more gendarmes to ensure security, and noted a surge of food and water arriving by air and sea.
“We all have to unite. From the first day, people mobilized day and night. We should not divide,” he said.
THE DEATH TOLL IS NOT CLEAR
Authorities have warned that it will be difficult to determine how many people have died in a territory that is home to large numbers of undocumented migrants from Comoros, Madagascar and other countries. Official statistics put the population of Mayotte at 321,000, but many say it is much higher.
Some victims were buried immediately, in accordance with Muslim tradition, before their deaths could be counted.
Health workers say they are bracing for a surge of disease as bodies remain unburied and people struggle to get clean water.
“We are faced with open-air mass graves, there are no rescuers, no one has come to collect the buried bodies,” Estelle Youssoufa, Mayotte’s representative in the national parliament, told Macron. He did not say where the graves were.
Mayotte residents filled water distribution points and wells to fill jerry cans and buckets. Others washed clothes or bathed in rivers.
“When we arrived here, everything was devastated, there was nothing standing,” El-Yassine Ibrahim told Reuters in Doujani, a poor neighborhood south of Mamoudzou.
“Everything was devastated. Since then, little by little, we have been sorting and gathering things, and we will see what we do next,” he said, as his relatives sifted through the rubble.
Three out of four inhabitants of Mayotte live below the national poverty line. While it exports vanilla, coffee and cinnamon, it remains heavily dependent on support from metropolitan France and attracts relatively few tourists.
“All the pipes are broken everywhere. There is no water in Mayotte anymore. We need water to do housework, cook, wash, bathe. To drink water, we buy it in stores,” Zalahta M’Madi, 44, said.
“No one tells us if the water will return tomorrow or the day after tomorrow or in a month. That’s why we are all worried.”
The death toll in mainland Africa, where the storm hit after passing through Mayotte, was 45 in Mozambique and 13 in Malawi, officials in those countries said.