Slam poet Geraldine Baptiste pulls no punches when telling the story of her “Granpapa”, one of the 1,500-plus people ripped from a peaceful existence on the Chagos Islands by the British to make way for a United States military base, most shipped “kouma zanimo” (meaning “like animals” in her native Creole) to a hellish fate more than 1,000 miles (1,610km) across the Indian Ocean in Mauritius.Belting out her poems in the Port Louis suburbs, the 26-year-old relates her grandfather’s memories of fishing in the crystalline waters of Peros Banhos atoll and feasting by firelight on “seraz pwason” (fish curry) and “kalou” moonshine, contrasting happy times with the horrors of his violent expulsion in the early 1970s and the decades of impoverished exile that followed – many did not survive.
“Pena okenn antidot; Pou geri sa blesir; Ki ankor pe soupire,” she says – there is no cure for those wounds, still weeping more than half a century on.
That line hits especially hard right now, as Mauritius prepares to assume sovereignty over the 60-island Chagos archipelago after vanquishing the United Kingdom in a landmark decolonisation case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) six years ago. The nation is on a knife edge as it awaits the final nod from the US, which wants cast-iron guarantees on the security of one of its most valuable bases on the atoll of Diego Garcia. Advertisement
Maur …
