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The French island of Mayotte is running out of drinking water amid a crisis driven by one of the worst droughts in its history.
For four months, residents in the French territory of about 310,000 people have had little or no running water in their homes.
The island, in the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar, has just two water reservoirs, both of which have reached a “critical level of decline”.
One is at seven per cent capacity and the other at six per cent. With very little rain on the cards and chronic poor water management, the reservoirs are at risk of drying out completely.
Mayotte residents’ access to running water has been slashed to roughly 18-hour periods, which only occur every few days. Many locals say the water they get during those periods is contaminated and undrinkable.
Schools have closed or reduced their hours because they don’t have enough water for students, while some residents reported having to skip work to search for water for their families.
The hashtag “MayotteASoif”, or “Mayotte is thirsty”, is trending on social media as locals share images of the murky liquid dripping from their taps.
Estelle Youssouffa, MP for the first constituency of Mayotte, shared photos on X of residents, including what appeared to be primary school aged children, cleaning rubbish from a parched river in an attempt to improve its circulation.
Another user shared an image of a few centimetres of green-brown water as she ran a bath for her child, writing that authorities “dare to tell you that it is drinkable”.
A third showed crowds of parents gathering to fundraise for a water storage tank so that their kids could attend school more often than once a week.
Resident and mum-of-two Racha Mousdikoudine shared the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen when she turns on the kitchen tap.
“Maybe I won’t get any water at all,” she told CNN.
“Maybe I’ll get 30 minutes of water. Maybe the water will only come after hours of waiting.”
Though it’s 8000km from mainland France, Mayotte is no less French than the cities of Paris or Nice. In 2011, the island was formally recognised as a French department, giving it the same legal status as the 96 departments on the mainland.
That means the water crisis is the French government’s responsibility. In September, it sent 600,000 litres of bottled water, as well as soldiers and civil servants to help with distribution.
But many Mayotte residents still feel abandoned.
Douainda Attoumani, 27, said similar conditions would be unthinkable if they were happening on France’s mainland.
“The authorities seem absent in our daily suffering,” she told CNN.
“When we have no water, what are we actually going to do? We’re going to die of thirst.”
The health risks associated with limited water supply are far-reaching.
Mayotte has recorded a surge in cases of gastroenteritis, a disease that causes a swollen stomach and intestines, diarrhoea and vomiting.
Mayotte Hospital medical committee president Soumeth Abasse said the gastroenteritis epidemic was due both to contaminated water and poor hygiene standards as residents try to ration the water that is available.
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