Simon and Rosemonde: To Life, To the Sea... After Their Son

For 50 years, this couple from Bois-des-Amourettes has braved the waves every day. Despite the loss of their son, they refuse to leave the only place where they feel together.

On December 25, 2021, Michael went out to sea as he did every day. He never returned. His father Simon was 74 years old, and his mother Rosemonde was 68. They had spent their entire lives on this sea that had just taken their son. A sudden illness on the boat, something that happened too fast, too brutally.

"We weren't prepared... there is no preparation for losing a child," Rosemonde murmurs, her voice breaking. Simon lowers his eyes. A heavy silence descends, yet the next day, they returned to the sea.

Bois-des-Amourettes. A village in the southeast of Mauritius, facing the vastness of the Indian Ocean. This is where it all began, and this is where it continues. Simon Nobin, 79 years old, was born in this village, the youngest of five children in a fishing family. He grew up with the rhythm of the waves, accompanying his father to sea as soon as he was big enough to hold a line. "My life has always been on the sea," he simply states, as if it's self-evident. Becoming a fisherman was not a choice; it was a destiny.

Rosemonde, on the other hand, comes from a tough childhood, built far from the sea. Her father died when she was a year and a half old, leaving her mother alone with nine children. Very young, she followed her mother into the sugarcane fields. She cut, gathered leaves, and carried straw for the goats. "My mother was a strong woman... she worked as a laborer to feed us." It was there, in this harshness, that she learned what would never leave her: the value of work, dignity in effort, courage as the only possible response to life.

She did not yet know the sea. It was Simon who brought it to her. He spotted her one day and knew. "I think I found my life," he would later say. He sent a message to his sister to arrange a meeting with Rosemonde's mother. "She didn't waste any time," she smiles. He came to ask for her hand.

They married on December 10, 1976. Since then, they have never parted. Rosemonde learns the sea alongside her husband. The line, the net, the currents, the seasons, the fish that come and those that become rare: the captain, the red mullet, the snapper. She learns to read the ocean as one learns a language, slowly, through the body, through mistakes, through repetition. A know-how passed down from generation to generation, which she receives from Simon and they in turn passed on to their children, Michael and Jossica.

Today, she has been a fisherman for 41 years. Simon has been for 55. Every morning, they set out together. "We believe love is in simple things... working together, suffering together, laughing together," she confides, her voice soft but filled with quiet strength. "Working together, living together, that is the greatest blessing."

Their daily life is demanding, almost brutal for bodies weighed down by age. They rise at dawn, go to sea, return at noon, rest for a while, and leave again from 6 PM to 11 PM. "This is our life," Rosemonde says with the serenity of someone who has made a choice she does not regret.

At sea, the couple finds something the shore does not offer. "On the sea, you forget everything; there is a tranquility that cannot be explained," Simon shares. There, far from noise and worldly worries, they are alone in front of the vastness and in front of themselves. There are days without fish. Days when they return with little. But Rosemonde assures: "I can tell you, there has not been a single day we didn't find something to eat." During cyclones, bad weather, lean periods... they always found food for their family. "God is great," she repeats. It is a deep conviction, rooted in fifty years of accumulated evidence.

And then, there is Michael. Their eldest son. A fisherman too, like his father and mother. As if the sea were in their blood for generations, impossible to uproot. He would be 43 today. "That pain... I don't think I can explain it," Rosemonde murmurs.

She tries anyway. She recounts that Christmas morning, the boat, the illness... "Things went too fast... too fast." In her voice, there is something that will never heal completely, that specific break that only the loss of a child can leave. Simon remains silent. Some pains are not shared. They carry them, each on their side, together.

They could have stopped. Sold the boat, turned their backs on the sea, never looked at the horizon the same way again. Many would have understood. They did not stop. "The sea helped us endure... it gives us strength," she says.

Today, Rosemonde is one of the few female fishermen on the island. In a man's profession, she has never sought to justify herself. "I believe there is nothing a woman cannot do if she believes in herself," she asserts with quiet pride. And when asked what gives her strength, she does not mention fishing. She looks at Simon. "I don't think I can work far from him... he is my strength." He responds with modesty, as he does everything: "We believe together... that is what keeps us strong."

In their eyes, the years, the early rises, the nights at sea. Jossica. And Michael, somewhere between the waves, always present. Fifty years of marriage. Fifty years on the same sea, in the same boat, facing the same waves. A whole life built together, with their hands, with their bodies, with their faith. A life marked by joy and by the irreparable. "The sea has taken things from us... but it has also given us everything," Rosemonde recounts. In the sound of the waves of Bois-des-Amourettes, her words resonate. And then, almost as a matter of course: "We don’t believe in stopping... as long as we can, we will continue."