Monday 29 September – walk on Silum’s island

We went to Silum’s island around midday, picking up Claudette along the way. We took in a bag of goodies for his family, which turned out to be just his wife Rose and his grandma. The rest of the family lives in the Ninigo islands, he moved here to look after his gran. Patrice the French sailor we talk about spent 3 weeks here last year and got to know Silum well. Rose was pregnant at the time and she was encouraged at 7 months to go to Ninigo islands to have the baby there as it was her first and she was very small. A councillor at the village she was staying at beat her up because she wasn’t do the community work, you don’t have to do the work if you are pregnant, but he would not believe her that she was pregnant because she was so small. It sounds like she was so badly beaten that she had a fit and lost the baby. He showed us photo’s of her beaten face, huge swollen black eyes. The councillor has been arrested for the crime, but is likely to bribe his way out of jail. It was a little baby boy and they named it Patrice after the sailor. Ugh really tough living out here!

We met his grandma who was very smiley and friendly but did not speak much english. Rose is tiny and is 3 months pregnant, but you would not know. They were pleased with their gifts. We wanted some exercise so he took us on a walk around the island, really beautiful island full of nesting boobies and other birds that looked like colourful pigeons. He pointed out the scrapings from a nesting turtle to us. We saw evidence of the coconut crabs, he promised to bring us some tomorrow. Sadly the island is definitely getting smaller he says. There are a lot of dead trees in the water. It was a good walk, although Rowan went barefoot and got a lot of splinters, and I got cut by the edges of sharp leaves that we clambered over. We don’t like cuts in this sea water!

Another quiet evening in paradise, with beautiful sunset skies.