At this time of year, preparations for the new school year are normally well under way. Instead, the families living there are having to find another place to live, with many of their homes blown away by the storm.

In the courtyard of the Paulette Henry elementary school, as Le Manguier is also known, breakfast is a meal of bread and tuna, washed down with fruit juice.

"There's no electricity here," said Mrahati Abdallah, one of the team that manages the centre. "So, we tried to stock up on non-perishable food."

Amid bottles of water, milk, boxes of biscuits and pureed fruit, town hall officials and volunteers took stock for the last time before distributing the provisions to homeless families who have spent the last two weeks at the school.

"Sometimes we get donations. Then we can give something else," they said.

As December and the old year drew to a close, faces were tense, with everyone aware that the centre -- and 20 other emergency shelters like it in the capital -- were shutting.

They opened their doors on December 13, the day before Cyclone Chido hit, and have since been home to nearly 12,500 people.

Le Manguier has housed 21 babies, 118 children and 63 adults.

On Monday, Roukia Abdillah was already preparing to leave.

She lived just a few metres from the school but her home was flattened in the cyclone -- the worst to hit France's poorest department in 90 years, in which at least 39 people were killed.

High winds flattened many of the shanty towns in which some 100,000 to 200,000 people lived.

"We won't leave here with dirty clothes," sighed Abdillah as she washed her laundry in a large metal basin.

"It will dry in the afternoon and tomorrow we will leave."

- Cleaning needed -

"They gave us a roof to shelter us," said Nadjati Mouhoudhoire, another local. "Now that they're asking us to leave, we will leave without trying to cause trouble."

She had already begun to take her belongings back home nearby, stashing clothes, water bottles and valuable documents under corrugated metal.

"I don't know where to go so I'm going to come back here," she added, standing in what remained of her house.

"I have to think about it but right now, I can't." How and when she and her son will rebuild is an unanswered question.

On Monday, the mayor of Mamoudzou, Ambdilwahedou Soumaila, told visiting French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou that all the emergency shelters in the city would be closed from January 1 "so that we can get the schools back".

"We have to clean up so the return to school, normally scheduled for January 20, can take place in the best possible conditions," he said.

Soumaila also told Bayrou that a state school that served as an emergency shelter had been burnt down in his area.

An investigation into the fire is under way, the Mamoudzou prosecutor's office told AFP on Tuesday.

Homeless families are at a loss to say where they will go when they leave the shelters, with the authorities still struggling to restore, water, power and telecoms to the impoverished archipelago.

"We just need time to rebuild our house," said Siti, a student at the Mgombani middle school, near Le Manguier.

"With my mother there are six of us. The youngest is just a few months old. We don't know where to go now. We know where to build but we haven't had time yet," he added.

Soumaila pointed out that the prime minister was committed to "taking care of all of these families who will have no place to sleep".

But exactly how has not been disclosed.