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.
