Her first impression was about the reticence with which she was greeted: "I was taken aback the people generally did not move towards me, but continued sitting, one group gathered under a palm-thatched boatshed, and the other around a man on a motor scooter who turned out to the be the chief".
'The people are shy,' said Poila (who guided her ashore). 'we don't get many visitors.'"
And she tells how she was "utterly thrilled" to see people carrying on life as they had for decades: "Here a man was shaving a coconut to make coconut cream, there a woman was weaving dry palm fronds to make thatch for her house".