Eastern Africa
Discover East Point Plantation Remains, Egmont Atoll — Lagoon and Reef, Île Boddam Church — Ruined Entrance.
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memory
East Point on Diego Garcia retains plantation buildings, foundations and household or industrial objects. A chapel and cemeteries form other parts of the area's heritage. These material traces must be understood alongside Chagossian lives and the community's removal from the islands, rather than treating the surviving buildings as an empty tropical backdrop.
nature
Follow the pale shallows around the lagoon, then look for the separate patches of island vegetation. Reef, open water and dry land share this atoll in the Chagos Archipelago, but they do not form one continuous strip of land. In 2018, field scientists recorded a breached sandspit connection at Egmont: a reminder that low coral islands have changing edges.
Source: www.biot.gov.io
history
Look at the pale arch stones set against worn plaster and creeping vegetation. This doorway belonged to the church of Boddam’s former settlement in the Salomon Atoll. Photographs from 2017 show the roof gone and plants growing among the surviving walls.
Source: www.biot.gov.io
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