But as time went on, Shanthi says, the feelings of helplessness grew.
Life in the camp was to exist in a bubble – news of major wars breaking out in Ukraine and the Middle East trickled through from the guards watching over the migrants, but they were kept away from the base and consumed by their own lives.
Access to the island, part of the Chagos Archipelago, is heavily restricted. It has officially had no resident population since the early 1970s when the UK evicted all the people living there so it could develop the strategic base.
“From day one until we left, every day we were living with rats,” Shanthi says. “Sometimes the rats would bite our children – their legs, fingers and hands. They stole our food. At nights sometimes they would crawl over our blankets and our heads.”
Giant coconut crabs and tropical fire ants would also crawl into the camp.
During storms, rain water would pour in through holes in the tents, which had previously been used for Covid patients in the pandemic.
When United Nations investigators visited the camp late last year, the children told them they dreamed of going for a picnic, riding a bike or eating an ice cream.
At one point earlier this year, a medical official described the camp as being in “complete crisis”, with mass self-harming and incidents of attempted suicide.
“My daughter was watching everything that happened. She’d say ‘mum they’ve cut themselves. Should I cut myself?’ So I’d say ‘no, no. You can’t do anything. I’ll protect you. Come and listen to some music, come and take some paper and just draw,'” she recalls through tears.
Both she and her husband sob as they talk about the two times their daughter self-harmed.
“Both times I felt really bad and couldn’t process it. When she did this, she told me she did it because she hoped if she died her parents and her brother would go to a safe third country,” Shanthi says.
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