Twenty-one-year-old Andjouza Tamou was all set for her wedding but her big day has been put on hold after her fiance's mother and sister perished in the Yemenia plane crash off the Comoros.
"We are here just waiting for any news," whispered the bride-to-be, her face covered with a blue veil.
"This is so much pain for a single village," she said, referring to Fomboni, some 40 km southeast of the capital Moroni.
Residents of this hamlet, accessible through a winding, bumpy road, have lost at least nine relatives in the June 30 air disaster in which a 12-year-old girl is the only known survivor among the 153 people on board.
Among them is the country's telecommunications minister Ahmed Abdou.
Dozens of women in traditional veils visited bereaved families waiting for the bodies of their kin to be retrieved from the Indian Ocean. Since the crash, emergency workers are yet to recover any bodies.
"This is a national tragedy," said a distraught Tamou.
Like many other Comoran villages struck by the tragedy, activities here have ground to a halt.
"Some shops have closed and ceremonies have been suspended," Fomboni village chief Ali Bwana Mze said, adding that prayers were being offered at mosques for the dead.
Summer is the season for huge, lavish weddings in this impoverished Indian Ocean archipelago with families in the diaspora travelling home for the festivities and reunions.
"We can't stand the rumours about the search. We would rather be informed directly and receive counselling," said Sitti Said Hassan, the minister's sister.
The Nyoumadzaha-Bambao village from where Bahia Bakari - the lone crash survivor - hails, is also mourning the loss of five residents.
A startling silence reigns at her uncle's home.
"There is sadness all over. People don't even have the courage to carry on with their lives," Bakari's uncle Ali Abdou said.
"We listen to the radio and we have a hotline number, but they don't have any information," he said.
Several relatives of the victims complain of little information regarding the search operations, while the lack of electricity in many rural homes means they have no access to news of search efforts.
Ahmed El Kabir, a spokesman of the victims' relatives group said many families are faced with "lack of credible information" especially on whether any bodies have been found.
"Some relatives believe that bodies will be found. They cannot face the reality because it is too painful," he explained.
But Interior Minister Bourhan Hamidou said the government is "trying to inform them," saying the lack of electricity in the countryside was hampering their efforts.
Amid the uncertainty and dearth of information, rumours flew round in Mvouni village, whose 15 residents were on the doomed aircraft, that bodies had been recovered hours after the early Tuesday crash.
They therefore dug graves which have remained open since.