Let's begin in the French overseas territory of Mayotte. Just a tiny collection of dots in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and Mozambique. It's home to around 300,000 people who've just endured one of the worst storms on the archipelago in nearly 100 years.

In our earlier podcast, we quoted French media reports from soon after the cyclone made landfall on Saturday stating that four people had been found dead. Now, as we record this podcast, authorities in Mayotte are warning that the death toll from Cyclone Chido will be in the hundreds, if not the thousands.

The storm spared no one and nothing. Homes, boats and schools were all destroyed, even the capital's hospital. These people in the main city of Mamudzu were queuing for food and water:
We've come to get something to eat. For the kids, for us adults, for everything. We've got nothing left. The wind's taken it all away. We had stocked up, but the wind took it all away.
We've had no water for three days now. We're trying to get the bare minimum to live on because we don't know when the water will come back.

Chido then moved on to hit northern Mozambique with videos on social media showing flooding and uprooted trees near the port city of Pemba. The UNICEF spokesperson in Mozambique, Guy Taylor, is there:
UNICEF is concerned about the immediate impacts of this cyclone, the loss of life, the damage to schools, to people's homes, to healthcare facilities. We're also worried about the longer term impacts. Children potentially being cut off from learning for weeks on end, people unable to get access to healthcare, and the potential spread of waterborne diseases like cholera and malaria.

Getting hold of anyone on Mayotte is proving almost impossible. Phone lines and the Internet are down. The BBC's Richard Kagoi, who's in Nairobi, has been piecing together what's happened.
What we're hearing right now is that emergency responders are currently trying to reach most places, trying to clear, so then they can be able to access much of the debris which has covered warehouses that majority of the people in the island once lived.

What is the latest on the relief operation?
So far we have French soldiers who had been deployed just before the cyclone struck. And today the first aircraft are carrying aid, specifically medical supplies, blood for transfusions and medical staff. Touchdown in the airport, which was significantly damaged. We're expecting two more aircrafts to come as well. And when the French interior minister will be traveling to the island, he'll be coming along with other soldiers, plus firefighters who are now going to assist with rescue and clearing operations.

And presumably we're going to have big problems going forward with just basic things like food and medicine.
Yeah, it is a very poor island. In fact, actually, it's the poorest of all the French territories. What's happened right now is because of the devastation, the destruction that has been caused, you'd have lots of people who have been displaced. About 300,000 people lived in this island, so preliminary estimates put it at about 100,000 of them don't even have a shelter. So first of all, access to clean drinking water, which was a huge challenge even before the cyclone, having access to food, to medicine, this is really going to be a major challenge going forward.

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