MAMOUDZOU, Mayotte — Nearly a week after a devastating cyclone, most streets have reopened in Mayotte, a tiny French island off the east coast of Africa.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who toured the territory, got into tense exchanges with residents. And services such as cellphone reception have slowly been returning to normal.
But despite all the efforts to move forward, a grim question hangs over this deeply impoverished archipelago: Exactly how many people died in Cyclone Chido?
The day after the disaster, France’s top official in Mayotte ignited broad alarm when he said of the death toll, “Maybe we will be closer to a thousand, maybe several thousand.”
A few days later, a lawmaker from the island told one of France’s largest newspapers that there were rumors of 20,000 victims. A local television station reported that rescue teams believed that up to 60,000 people — 19% of the island’s population — had perished. The station later deleted the report from its social media accounts, but not before Macron was forced to address the claim, saying there was “nothing to corroborate” it, even if it was “very likely that there are many more victims.”
Yet, the official toll as of Friday remained 35, fewer than half of the 75 people reported to have died in the storm when it hit nearby Mozambique. Along the steep slopes of the shantytowns that had been most ravaged by the storm, there were few signs of mass casualties.
There were no scenes of public mourning. Almost no one interviewed personally knew someone who had died or was searching for a missing loved one. At the hospital, no crowds were seeking to get into the morgue to identify relatives, and there was no stench of cadavers around the rubble where hundreds of people were already trying to rebuild their homes.
Still, there were far-flung communities officials had not made it to yet.
“I don’t believe in the possibility of thousands of dead,” said Bilal Ousseini, who works at the busiest mosque in the capital, Mamoudzou, where worshippers trickled in for the traditional Friday prayer.
Kaweni, the neighborhood that is home to the mosque, holds France’s largest shantytown. It was all but flattened by the cyclone and is the place where many people say more dead may be hidden in the rubble.
Along the narrow ridges where tin shacks were going back up, hearsay dominated the conversation surrounding the death toll.
“In Kaweni, there might be many dead,” said Soumaili Soifouane, an informal trader, who personally knew just one person who had died. “The day after the cyclone, we heard that there were nine dead. Just yesterday, we heard that they found three bodies.”
Migrants living on the island illegally make up a large share of shantytown residents, and French authorities say they are less likely to seek medical attention for fear of being arrested and deported. Many are also practicing Muslims, who traditionally bury their dead within 24 hours, suggesting that “a large number of people who have died in precarious housing will be buried before they can be officially recorded and counted,” the Interior Ministry said.
But Anli Daoud, who organizes funerals for the mosque in Kaweni, said rumors that families were burying their dead in communities without notifying anyone were untrue. The mosque had received only four bodies since the cyclone, he said.
“In our Muslim religion, it’s important to bury people in the cemetery,” he said. “Here in Kaweni, we bury our dead in the right way.”
Many residents may have avoided perishing in the cyclone because of all the warnings issued beforehand, Daoud said. Hours before it hit last Saturday morning, he said, he got on the microphone at the mosque and warned worshippers to take cover.
Mamoudzou Mayor Ambdilwahedou Soumaila said people who might be stuck under the rubble had not yet been found because local officials were still waiting for support from Paris to enter communities and begin searching.
As he walked the streets of Mamoudzou to hear residents’ concerns Friday, he said it was highly unlikely that search teams would find any survivors when they reached the wreckage of the shantytowns.
“It’s our responsibility to go,” said Soumaila, adding that he was scared that their worst fears of a high death toll could still come true.
Although the reports of 60,000 dead were “unreasonable,” he said, he believed the death toll could be hundreds or as much as 1,000.
“We will only be able to verify after the excavations,” he said.
Part of the uncertainty around the death toll is that some villages outside the capital remain isolated and have yet to receive any government outreach, residents said.
French authorities say they are mounting a concerted effort to clarify the toll and to reach out to those communities. The local representative for the French government has ordered dedicated survey teams to go from town to town and to coordinate with mayors and local aid organizations.
In the meantime, as foul-smelling piles of rotting waste grow on Mamoudzou’s streets almost a week after the cyclone, and as aid efforts have been sluggish, residents worry about the potential spread of diseases.
“Here in Kaweni, we haven’t seen the authorities,” said Daoud. “We had to clean up ourselves.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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