Mayotte Diary: Life in France's Largest Slum in the Wake of the Cyclone
**Fahad Idaroussi Tsimanda, a geographer specializing in Mayotte’s “informal” neighborhoods, returned to Kawéni (a suburb of Mamoudzou)—France’s largest shantytown—a few days after Cyclone Chido struck. He tells us about the destroyed “huts” and how people are struggling to survive.
His logbook provides a hour-by-hour account of the disaster. Part Two.
Fahad Idaroussi Tsimanda, University of Montpellier
Monday, December 16
Two days after the cyclone passed, I decided to return to Kawéni. My first attempt had been thwarted by time constraints and the many demands I had to attend to: interviews, helping with cleanup efforts in my village, and other emergencies. Kawéni, located in the municipality of Mamoudzou—the island’s capital—is home to the largest shantytown in France. This town was one of the study sites for my thesis, which focused on the vulnerabilities of migrants in Mayotte.
There, all the risk factors are present: high population density, lack of access to resources (roads, water, electricity, etc.), terrain prone to natural hazards, and makeshift housing, often built using recycled materials. These shantytowns have been tolerated in Mayotte due to massive migratory pressure, which has strained the island’s capacity to provide adequate housing, as well as economic constraints and difficulties in managing this long-standing phenomenon, which has become an integral part of the urban landscape.
On the road to Kawéni, passing through Majicavo Koropa, I spot an emergency shelter made of Algeco containers, completely torn apart by the force of the wind. At the entrance to the shantytown, not far from the Lycée des Lumières, I ran into an acquaintance, Ravi, a resident of Kawéni Bandrajou who had helped me gain access to his neighborhood during my research. On the day the cyclone struck, he stayed in his tin-roofed hut and went to sleep. A few minutes after he woke up, his house was completely destroyed by the wind. It’s a miracle he emerged unscathed.
Total chaos
As I enter the Kawéni shantytown, I am struck by the utter chaos. The residents, mostly Comorians, are overwhelmed and constantly shuttle back and forth between the shantytown and the formal neighborhoods. Before the cyclone, the shantytown functioned in a way similar to a formal neighborhood, despite the extremely precarious living conditions. The homes, 95% of which are made of corrugated iron, cover an area of about one hectare. Inside, space is limited and multifunctional. A single room serves as a kitchen, bedroom, and living room all at once. The furnishings are minimal: a few mattresses, plastic chairs, and a makeshift table. The paths between the houses are winding, steep alleys, sometimes stabilized with tires, rocks, or concrete.
Public infrastructure is virtually nonexistent. Here, people improvise for everything: illegal water and electricity connections, and neighbors helping one another to make up for what’s lacking. Community life revolves around informal activities: small grocery stores, livestock farming, and artisanal workshops. Koranic schools and small open spaces, where residents chat and play, are central hubs of social life.
Cyclone Chido devastated everything: homes, businesses, Koranic schools, and the mosque. Even the animals were swept away. This has deeply affected the fragile system of solidarity that kept the neighborhood functioning. For now, the death toll remains uncertain. Authorities report 35 deaths across the entire island, 67 seriously injured, and 2,432 with minor injuries.
However, some people working at the Mayotte Hospital Center are reporting different figures: according to them, there are reportedly about 100 deaths in Petite-Terre and 1,000 deaths in Grande-Terre. The figures remain a subject of debate: many people are questioning the government’s transparency and accusing it of hiding the exact death toll to limit its responsibility for the tragedy.
A man explained to me that he, too, had stayed home, while his wife and children were evacuated to the Lycée des Lumières.
“If I must die, it is God’s will,” he said.
Others cite different reasons:
“I just didn’t want to leave, that’s all.”; “I want to keep my house.”; “There have been warnings before, and nothing happened.”
I asked whether the authorities had issued warnings about the severity of the emergency, as they did in 2019 during the respective passages of Kenneth (April) and Belna (December). Someone replied that they had not:
"No one from City Hall, the prefecture, or the intermunicipal association has come to see us."
Rebuilding the Slum
Some residents, who have the physical or financial means, have begun to rebuild. The strongest among them are organizing to fetch water, while others are simply trying to protect what remains of their belongings. Everyone seems to be in a hurry, as if life had been put on hold by the cyclone and now had to be set back in motion at any cost.
Further on, I see residents collecting sheets of metal, which appear to come from houses located in the “formal” neighborhoods. Here, “formal” refers to neighborhoods recognized by the people of Mayotte, local authorities, and the government as official, legal residential areas, complete with street addresses, paved roads, and so on. Conversely, “informal” refers to shantytowns, where structures are illegal and utilities are absent.
Some residents work in groups: one person carries the metal sheets from the boundary between the formal and informal neighborhoods, while another carries them to the site where they will be used.
Fear of theft
The tension is palpable. People are exhausted, and mistrust prevails, especially when it comes to essential resources. Everyone accuses everyone else of being a potential thief. The hurricane has rendered several security measures ineffective (fences, alarms, video surveillance, etc.). The Lycée des Lumières paid the price: groups of thieves mingled with the affected families and waited until nightfall to steal computers, video projectors, and chairs.
Around 6 p.m., a resident of the shantytown asked me to watch over his sheet metal. I waited a long time for him to come back. After he returned, I decided to leave. As I walked toward the paved road, I spotted several people gathered around a generator. I joined them to learn more about this community initiative: here, for two euros, you can recharge your cell phone battery—essential for getting around safely through the maze of corrugated metal sheets and for staying in touch with loved ones during this crisis.
Gathered around their cell phones, some Comorians are talking about returning to their home country because they’ve lost everything in the cyclone. They fear hunger or a lack of work—those small jobs known here as “bricoles” or “kibaroa”—such asfarming a Mahoran’s field or building a house. But for now, returning is impossible: there are no boats connecting the two neighboring islands of Mayotte and the Comoros.
Fahad Idaroussi Tsimanda, Geographer, Research Associate at LAGAM, University of Montpellier, University of Montpellier
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.