Kawéni has been pulverized, wiped off the face of the earth. Where, only a few days ago, a shantytown comprised of bangas – precarious huts – stood, all that now remained were bare hilltops, scattered heaps of tangled wood and sheet metal, strewn over several square kilometers.

France's largest shantytown, in the French overseas department of Mayotte, on the western outskirts of the capital, Mamoudzou, has disappeared – much like all of the island's other informal settlements – wiped out by cyclone Chido on Saturday, December 14. Of the estimated 20,000 inhabitants of Kawéni, which is home to many undocumented foreign nationals from the Comoros, only 5,000 had reportedly reached shelters, as identified by the Mayotte prefecture.

Some 500 disaster victims sought refuge at the Lumières high school in Kawéni, and 400 more at the city's hospitality vocational high school. "It's desolation," said Jacques Mikulovic, head of Mayotte's education authority. "We're reaching the end of the food and water stockpiles. We have to restock quickly. The forest, which used to be a source of food, has been devastated."

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