Madagascar: what resilience after the passage of a cyclone?
Audio 15:25
Cyclone Batsirai caused great damage, especially on the east coast of Madagascar, such as here, in Mananjary, on February 7, 2022. © Alkis Konstantinidis, Reuters
By: Alexandra Cagnard Follow
2 mins
The Indian Ocean is in full hurricane season.
In the space of a fortnight, the east coast of Madagascar was hit by cyclones Batsirai and Emnati.
In between, the area also suffered the ravages of Storm Dumako.
How do the Malagasy face these successive ordeals?
Sarah Tétaud is one of RFI's correspondents in Madagascar.
She went to the town of Mananjary, she says.
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It was by plane that Sarah Tétaud reached Mananjary on the east coast of Madagascar.
This is where Cyclone Batsirai hit with full force on February 5, 2022. In this episode of
Witnesses to the News
, Sarah explains that the elders told her that this tropical cyclone was one of the most impressive they have ever seen. known in duration and intensity: "
They told me, it felt like the sky was falling on us, that nothing was stopping it and that it wasn't ending
".
“
People have to face up
,” continues Sarah,
“what really struck me was that they weren't complaining.
These inhabitants were in the most total destitution, but they remained valiant and dignified.
For having experienced cyclones in other regions of Madagascar, this feeling,
she explains
, I had never perceived it before
”.
The east coast of Madagascar is regularly on the front line of these destructive cyclones but there is, says Sarah, a real resilience: “
The population does not expect anything from the authorities and the government.
The inhabitants are used to fending for themselves
”.
Many humanitarian organizations in Madagascar have deployed to help the inhabitants of Mananjary, but private initiatives are also very present: "
I arrived the day a group of about twenty young people had come with seven tons of food aid, with clothes.
People from five or six towns in Madagascar who, through Facebook, had made an appointment to collect donations
”.
These initiatives, continues Sarah, “
are not in the shackles of the big NGOs and are much more flexible and much faster, which allowed them to be the first on site to be able to distribute the first aid
”.
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