BBCOn the night Cyclone Chido hit the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte, Zinedine was in his home, a small house made of corrugated iron and wood where he lives with eight of his relatives.
Zinedine had received a warning from the authorities about the cyclone, but he didn’t take it too seriously.
“I thought it was like in previous years when they warned that a cyclone was coming but it would just be a bit of rain. So we stayed home.”
This time however the island was about to be hit by winds of more than 124mph (200km/h) – the strongest cyclone to hit the island in almost a century
So far 31 people are known to have died, according to French officials, and thousands more feared missing.
When another, more urgent cyclone warning came through, Zinedine swung into action.
“I told my mum it’s never happened before that they send a message like this so I think this time it’s serious.”
He suggested they go to their neighbours’ place, a bricks and mortar house not far from his, in a poor neighbourhood high up in the hills of Mayotte’s Petite Terre, the smaller of its two islands.
But his mum didn’t want to go, and he felt he had to stay home with his family. The 20-year-old tourism student is the eldest boy in his family and feels responsible for them.
When the storm started, he and his mum hid his younger siblings under a table. Then there was a loud noise.
“The iron roofing of our house flew off. We panicked and looked for shelter. There were iron sheets, wood and other big objects flying everywhere.”
He took his siblings to the neighbour’s hut when he turned around he noticed his mum hadn’t followed.
“I decided to go back outside to get my mother even though it was dangerous with the wind and everything. I’d rather die than leave my mum to die.”
His mother stood in the middle of their damaged house holding a one-year-old baby. She was terrified and wouldn’t let the baby go. Zinedine snatched him from her arms and ran to give him to the neighbours. He eventually had to carry his mother out of the house.
“Luckily we’re all safe but we’ve lost everything. The only things we were able to save were our papers and diplomas.”
Now he’s trying to rebuild his family’s home. Finding new building materials is incredibly difficult in Mayotte at the moment due to high demand, and he couldn’t afford new roofing for his house so he tracked down some of the corrugated iron sheets that were blown off by the storm and plans to re-use them.
“I’m trying to do what I can. Even though I’m not a builder, I want to do it myself because I don’t know if the authorities will help us.”
All across Mayotte, others like Zinedine are attempting to do the same, the sound of hammers ringing late into the night.
But as resourceful as the people of Mayotte are, they’re also angry at the lack of support they say they’ve received from the government.
During French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the islands on Thursday, he was booed whilst trying to make a speech. As he visited a hospital, frustrated staff complained of being overwhelmed.
Most of the people we spoke to when in Mayotte were yet to receive any state aid, five days after the cyclone.
“We’ve only received food donations from volunteers who’ve also given us clothes and water. The mayor’s office tried to help a bit but that’s it” says 18-year-old mother-of-three Yasmine Moussa.
She took her three boys, the youngest of whom is just three months old, to the closest shelter, a secondary school in the neighbourhood of Labattoir, shortly after receiving the storm warning on Friday afternoon.
“On the day of the cyclone my children were crying because of the noise. When we looked outside we saw corrugated iron roofs flying everywhere. They kept asking me what was happening, why everything was breaking,” she said.
“I said to them it’s just wind and rain but the next day when they saw everything was destroyed. They couldn’t sleep that night.”
When she headed back home, she could hardly recognise her own neighbourhood.
“Mango trees had fallen during the storm and were blocking the roads. My neighbour had to point my house out to me because I couldn’t even spot it. There was water everywhere, the toilet was broken, my TV, everything was ruined. I tried to save what I could.
“I was in tears, I never imagined this would happen.”
Now she has nowhere else to go. She says the conditions in the shelter are decent but she needs a house to take her children to. They now sleep on mattresses in one of the school’s classrooms with a dozen other families.
“It’s not normal to sleep like this. The doors don’t lock and sometimes strangers walk in. I worry for my children’s safety and that they will try to steal from us.”
The Red Cross told the BBC there are at least 100,000 people in shelters around Mayotte.
President Macron has promised compensation for the uninsured, who make up the majority of the population, but he hasn’t said how much they’ll get.
The needs are huge: almost all of the islands have to be rebuilt. But some on the political right in France argue that spending too much money in Mayotte will only encourage more undocumented migrants to come to the French territory.
Back in La Vigie, Zinedine says he understands their objections but he disagrees.
“We’re humans at the end of the day. And we need help.”
