Surya McEwen

And also you become quite in the training process and in the like preparation process, you build quite strong bonds with people.

And so...

To see people that you've become really close with be severely hurt and go through all sorts of trauma.

It's this collective processing that happens in those moments afterwards.

But there was definitely a sense of collective perseverance and wanting to carry on with the mission.

It hadn't changed the importance of what we were there to do at all.

Yeah, I mean, there's constantly, we have this incredible collective of people who are working on the boats, who are making sure that everything's safe, ensuring that we have enough aid, we have the right amount of people on board, we have a good balance of people.

We have, you know, electricians and people who can deal with problems that arise on the boats as we go.

And so it was just a matter of coming together and talking collectively as a group just to work through the issues

our ideas um the feelings that we had about what had happened and and what we wanted to to do going forward um and then setting off again finding a way to try to break the siege from there and so you set off again

We did.

We went from Crete and then sailed through the islands to get to Marmaris, which was the last point where others gathered and met the fleet, joined the fleet.

And then we carried on from there in the direction of Gaza.

It was baby formula.

It was medicine.

It was women's sanitary products.

There's a bunch of things that are just really peculiar in the list of stuff that isn't allowed through

through the borders on um on aid trucks so we try to we try to gather as many of those things as possible to take but we're on little ships as well like the amount that we bring as much aid as we can possibly take in terms of like the weights that are allowed on board um but it's a symbolic amount you know we're bringing we're bringing aid but we're also trying to like break this blockade and make it possible for the big aid ships to come through and um

It's bringing aid and it's bringing solidarity, but it's also the effort to try to break down these walls that are keeping Gaza from the world and the world from Gaza.

And trying to contribute to the possibility of freedom and equality for people there.