Of course, that's the point: You are running under the rescue kernel. Is the path to your database directory still the same? If not, edit your configuration to

Of course, that's the point: You are running under the rescue kernel. Is the path to your database directory still the same? If not, edit your configuration to point to the new location, try to use mysql tools. If you cannot use mysql tools, you need to provide very detailed and ample diagnostic information to for anyone to be able to help you diagnose why you can't use them. An alternative is to create another droplet with the exact same configuration, install the exact same MySQL version on it, use the exact same configuration file, and copy over the data files. Good luck.