Schoolchildren Traumatised In Mayotte

Article source: " « Tous sont angoissés et font des cauchemars » : à Mayotte, la difficile reprise des élèves traumatisés " [paywall], Frédéric Gouaillard, Le Parisien, 27/02/2025.

Ever since the schools reopened in Mayotte, on 27 January, it has been a common occurrence for primary school pupils to break down for no apparent reason. 

“They burst into tears in the middle of class. And it’s not just because they’re too tired or hungry, we can tell that they need psychological support,” says Rivomalala Rakotondravelo, head teacher at Abdourahamane-Soilihi primary school in Mamoudzou, the administrative capital of the French territory.

Like many teachers, “Rivo” as his colleagues call him, has been able to gauge the psychological damage Cyclone Chido has inflicted on the young Mahorans. Classes started again a month ago, in more or less precarious conditions depending on how damaged the school buildings are, and many students are still traumatised by the devastating natural disaster that hit the island on 14 December.

"They're all feeling anxious and having nightmares"

“On my own initiative, I wrote a little questionnaire for my 11 to 13-year-old students. I asked them to rate on a scale of 0 to 10 how they are feeling, if they are having nightmares, etc.,” says Julie, a secondary school PE teacher in Kani-Kéli, in the South of the island. “When I looked at the results, I saw that they’re all feeling anxious and having nightmares. They say that every little unexpected noise scares them. Even the boys who say they’re feeling fine rate themselves, on average, at 5 to 6 on the nightmare scale.”

The president of the ACSJ football club in M'Tsangamouji, Zouari Souffou is also seeing the day-to-day consequences of the cyclone on the 300 young members of his club. “Right after the cyclone, they were constantly afraid and sometimes burst into tears. They had never seen anything like it, some of them have lost their homes, can you imagine?” says Souffou. “They’re still traumatised today, they often talk about it. But we try our best to work with them, we organise field trips and barbecues. We hope things will get better when the competitions start again on 28 April.”

Very Few Therapists In Schools

At the delayed start of the school term, on 27 January, the national education ministry announced that they were putting in place three emergency psychological trauma units along with three student counselling services. But in reality, there are no therapists in schools, or very few.

“Not a single therapist has come to our school,” laments Léon*, a secondary school teacher on the island of Pamanzi, “all the teachers got was an email saying that we could make a list of the students who wished to talk to one, but none of my students wanted to be on the list. When they’re asked if they want to see a therapist, they insist they’re not crazy.” Since the schools reopened, he has noticed a lack of motivation on the part of the pupils in his classes. “The children seem to be out of it. They come in late, and many are losing interest in the classes.” The therapists appointed by the government do what they can, some of them are planning group therapy sessions, but there are not enough of them. And teachers have received scant training to cope with the situation.

Scant Teacher-Training

“After Chido, a couple of teachers in my school took a two hour long course where they were taught how to help the students express their feelings," says Julie, “it was a lot of theory, it was certainly interesting, but there was nothing tangible that could be applied to Chido. After that, we were asked to implement what we had been taught. It’s not good enough, there should have been a therapist in every school.” The board of education in Mayotte, when contacted for a comment, said they were still waiting for the results of a ‘study’ into the psychological student support services, adding, “special counselling units for school staff were very rapidly put in place, providing training in how to help students express themselves, and to listen to what they have to say.”

* Name changed, ed.

Translated by Kathel Bourhis, Maxime Carpentier and Edgar Renaud.

Editing by Sam Trainor.