Bor’ Endan, Bor’ Déhor

A  Childhood at Chagos

This charming book, written in French and illustrated with paintings by the celebrated Chagossian artist Clement Siatous, recounts various episodes in the life of the author who grew up in and around the islands of the Chagos archipelago where various members of her family worked as administrators.  Among the stories offered up in the book is an encounter with the legendary French yachtsman, Bernard Moitessier. She sees an exhausted, sunburnt man with long, dishevelled hair chatting with her uncle on the verandah of the manager’s house at Diego Garcia. He is inconsolable, lamenting the loss of Marie-Thérèse. The author imagines that he must be referring to his wife, presumably left behind in France, and shares his sadness, which is somewhat dissipated when she  discovers he was referring to his wrecked yacht!  This was not the end of Moitessier’s misfortunes, she later learns. After his departure she is informed that he has been attacked by a shark and has left for Mauritius where his leg will be amputated.

Forty years later, reading the story of his adventures, she comes across details of his sojourn at Diego Garcia, but to her surprise there is no mention of a shark attack; was this a tall story told to her by one of the islanders, or her own childhood invention?

Other anecdotes in the book see her drinking turtles’ blood and playing around the wrecked Catalina airplane which for her was the most picturesque aspect of Diego Garcia – truly a childhood on Chagos is an unusual one!

© M. Carter, M. Descroizilles  & A. Mulnier