One Bag of Sand
“Tickets please,” called the conductor. It was a fuggy afternoon made worse by the smeary windows of the carriage I was sat in. A girl across the way from me had her phone playing some kind of music that I found myself incapable of recognizing through its tinny speakers. As I got my wallet out I noticed I still had sand on my fingertips. Crawley in West Sussex is a typical English town. It has a BHS, a Boots the Chemist and a Debenhams…so maybe the slightly nicer end of suburbia. This is where the train sat; still at the station in Crawley. We were a long way from where this almost white powder had come from: more than 5000 miles in fact.
Three hours earlier I had been sat in a taxi with three very dark skinned women who were nattering away in a language I didn’t recognize. Bernadette; whom I had met 5 minutes previously at the Station, also waiting to be picked up, explained that this was their native tongue and was a mixture of languages, the main being French. Listening harder I did keep recognising the odd word here and there from what I’d learned in primary school and from family holidays. This particular creole is the language of the people of the Chagos Islands.
Six degrees south of the equator is where you’ll find the Chagos archipelago; a series of coral atolls sat exactly south of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean. And while they don’t have quite the same climate as Crawley, since 1814; have been part of the UK, or at least; the United Kingdom’s Overseas Territory.
We arrived shortly after at a council estate down the road from the station. It was a sort of dull sandstone colour and had a row of shops at ground level. I was led up a flight of steps to what felt like someone’s roof and shown into a small flat. “Please come in, take a seat.” Sabrina was of Mauritian origin and worked for the NHS I discovered. This was her flat and where we’d arranged the previous week to have our meeting. She had also brought along three other people to fill me in on the Chagossians fight for justice. Didier was 21 and a 2nd generation Chagossian. The two other ladies in the room were Adeline and Bernadette. Both Adeline and Bernadette were natives of Chagos and in their sixties. They both remember living there and leaving there.
Over the years the Chagossians had been shepherded off their various islands until the only populations were to be found on Peros Banhos, Salomon and, the largest of the group: Diego Garcia. By 1971, when the Chagossians were eventually evacuated, the only island to have a population was Diego Garcia. This was where Bernadette was from.
Bernadette said something that shocked me then. “When our parents saw them gassing our dog, our pet dog…think what they were thinking in their heads. Soon it will be my children.” And she’s right. No wonder they went along with the eviction request.
The reason the British wanted to remove the Chagossians was because the Americans requested they be got rid of. The Americans expressed an interest in building an air base on Diego Garcia which the UK of course were all in favour of, but; the Americans said they didn’t want anyone on the island to get in the way. And as the Chagossians technically counted as UK citizens the government felt within their rights to remove them from the islands. “They told us not to pack much” says Adeline. “A deal had been struck and when we get to Mauritius there’ll be homes for us, land, animals and things to farm. We never saw any of these things they promised.” Not only this, but only half the Chagossians made it to Mauritius.
Families were loaded onto one of two boats to be shipped off. ‘It doesn’t matter which boat you get on’ they were told, ‘they’re going to the same place’. But half way to Mauritius the two boats split up and one went to the Seychelles instead. Families were split up and they didn’t see each other again for years.
Although they were allowed to visit; it’s not the same as being allowed to return and live on their island. Despite the Chagossians having the permission to return and visit the islands, the first visit was a tentative one. Bernadette told me about the first visit back to Diego. Over 100 people from around the UK, Mauritius and the Seychelles all coming together back where they belong. The American military however kept guard over them at all times. They were bussed from one location to the next. When they were there, strict guard was kept over them. American military personnel kept watch over them with machine guns.
“At one point the bus stopped so we could stretch our legs. Everybody sees a flower, it’s a flower that’s from our homeland, you don’t get it anywhere else. The group; they’re all so excited to see it run over to the plant. When they see us running they think we’re going to run and hide in the forest. Hide and do what? I don’t know. But we run to the planet and they click [reload] their guns at us! They reload to warn us not to run away on our own island!”
When I had originally started researching the Chagos Islands, a fellow Chagossian supporter, Clency Lebrasse, got in touch with me and pointed me in the right direction. Clency gave me an article to read here, a page to look at there and he showed me the Facebook groups. He was the person who originally put me in touch with Sabrina. Before speaking to her though I decided that the best way to speak to people would be post something up on the group. A few days later I got a response.
“I saw your post on the wall of the UK Chagos Support Association. You should contact Allen Vincatassin (he's on Facebook) who is the leader of the Diego Garcian community based in Crawley. As you may know, this is where the majority of the Chagossians who live in the UK are based. Allen has just been elected as the President of the newly-formed Diego Garcian Government in waiting, and he's a really inspirational person!”
‘Brilliant,’ I thought! The president! You don’t get much better than that surely? Excitedly I wrote a message to Clency to let him know I was drafting an interview request for the President in waiting. I got to work typing up an email to Allen Vincatassin. Just as I was getting to the end of the email I got a message back from Clency.
“Max; please, please; don't involve Allen! He's upset a lot of Chagossians, and we don't want him hijacking this…”
Although Clency proceeded to explain all to me I thought it best to ask everyone in Crawley when I was there. “So what’s the deal with Allen Vincatassin?” I asked. They all laugh; there’s a touch exasperation in their laugh. It transpires that he’s self-elected, and not only that but his political view is that the Chagossians should not be allowed to return. “How can you be President of somewhere you’re not?”
A few months ago a much smaller group returned to Diego to visit. All three women present were part of this expedition. Although restrictions were looser on this trip Bernadette was in outrage about proceedings. “We used to eat our Coconut Crab. But when we were there we could not eat them…we were not allowed to have Coconuts to eat! Can you imagine that?! We break their rules, we break them!” She laughs triumphant at her disregard for the regulations that were imposed upon them on their own homeland. “We were not allowed to pick up sand or seashells. But we did!” At this point Sabrina got up and left the room. She returned a moment later with a Tescos carrier bag and a grin on her face. The bag, which she so carefully cradled was filled with sand; whiter and finer sand than I’ve ever seen before. How can this be part of the United Kingdom? Half the world away; how can Diego Garcia belong to us and not the people who have been there for countless generations? Even on the Atlantic coast our beaches are not this pristine.
Every time the Chagossians have seemed to be getting somewhere in their political battle to get home; the light at the end of the tunnel gets moved that little bit further away. They keep fighting regardless and their supporters are growing, especially with the aid of the Internet and famous faces joining their ranks. In 2003 Ben Fogle had an article about the Chagossian fight for justice published in the Guardian and then in 2004; his book, The Teatime Islands was published, in which he attempted to get onto Diego Garcia, but was turned around and sent away before setting foot on shore.
To see in that room in Crawley; not only two native Chagossians still fighting for their right to go home, a Mauritian and a second generation Chagossian all speaking the same native tongue and fighting for the same cause made me think that there might be hope yet. And with sand that white; why not.
