Chagos Days from a Kid's Point of View

It's day 3 of our passage from Chagos to Seychelles. We are hoping to arrive next Wednesday, on August 16th, Dave's birthday, but with winds expected to lighten over the next couple of days, it may not be achievable. The passage so far has been good, with both seas and winds a little calmer than our last trip!

Our last day in Chagos got off to a good start when Simon, the BIOT patrol officer stopped by and gave us 8 tangerines!! It was our first fresh fruit since Cocos Keeling and very much appreciated!! The mention of fresh fruit made me think of this email that Gaby sent to her Grandpa yesterday while on passage, and it captured our time in Chagos so nicely from her point of view, that I thought it would be nice to share!


-------- Original Message --------

Hi Papa and Granny from Gaby!

I'm glad you're having a beautiful day there in Madeira Beach! It's been a little overcast here but today we have some blue skies popping out. Momma is making bread which is so nice because it's quite hard to do it at sea so I'm very grateful!

Our time in Chagos was so fun! A lot of the time we would go to the beach, collect a lot of palm leaves and make a Bonfire! Sometimes we would bring the fresh fish we caught and grill it on the fire. It had such a wonderful flavor with the smokiness in it. But after having fish so much I do really miss that bowl of fruit!!!

Other times just the kids paddled to the beach on a stand up paddle board or a surf board. We would go and find sticks and use a pocket knife to sharpen them like spears. We would walk around like native Chagosians, and climb palm trees to get the coconuts and crack them open to get the milk inside and as a snack afterwards we would eat the meat inside. When we got hot we would run to the water with our boards and go surf on the little waves that broke on a sand bank. There were four "bigger" kids and also four "little" kids. The bigger kids are Yoav, Victor, Ben and myself. The little ones are Eyal, Arthur, Anna, and Dror. When we went surfing sometimes the little ones would come on their boogie boards and we would give them a push on a wave so they could surf too.

I am the only girl except for Anna a five year old French girl. But even though there is a 6 year difference and we speak completely different languages we get on very well!

Also sometimes when all the kids are at the beach we go in the shallow water and 4 little kids climb on to the 4 big kids shoulders and we have a war. We move around and on top they wrestle with the other little kids!

I don't know if you know this but in the Jewish religion when a boy turns 13 they have a Bar Mitzvah and it is huge like a sweet 16 or something. Anyway Yoav turned 13 in Chagos and that's where we celebrated his Bar Mitzvah! We all went to the beach and it started to POUR with rain. Yoav said his speech and we threw candy at him as you are supposed to do. Also they didn't have any candy so guess what?!?! WE MADE CANDY!!!! We went to Moby and learned how to make caramel from scratch!!!! Anyway we struggled to keep the fire alive in the rain but we did! Everyone huddled around it to keep warm because it was so cold with the rain. When the rain became worse then ever, we said it was time to go back so Victor shouted (and he is French)," ABANDON ZE BEACH!!!" while we were all running to the dingys! Because you would normally say, "ABANDON THE SHIP" but we aren't normal! It was so funny!!!

Anyway I'm going to stop here because this email is very long. I hoped you enjoyed it and I love and miss you all!
P. S. I am not feeling seasick so I think I have gotten my sea legs once and for all!
Love,
Gaby💜


Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.

Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.