by Peter Benson
‘You deserve it,’ the guests said, and, ‘Friendly chap,’ when he’d gone.
Odette liked him to read to her. She missed the sound of a man’s voice and watched his lips move. He sat on the beach with her. ‘What happened today?’ she said.
Albert coughed and opened the paper. He looked at her and smiled before saying, ‘There’s been a fire in Mahebourg.’ He ran his finger down the story. ‘Three houses burnt down before they could put it out.’
‘Oh…’
‘But no one was hurt. A man down there’s a hero now. He carried five children out through smoke-filled rooms!’
Odette watched the way Albert’s hair fell across his forehead and waited for his hand to smooth it away from his eyes. She enjoyed the anticipation. He turned a page, tidied his hair and she leant back. ‘And there was an accident at Centre de Flacq.’ He shook his head. ‘A bus hit a cow.’
Jimmie came back from fishing with a stick and string and asked for some bread. He smiled and said, ‘I nearly got one.’
Albert looked over the top of his paper and said, ‘You won’t catch anything with bread…’
‘I will!’
‘If you say so.’ Albert rummaged in his pocket for a packet of cigarettes.
‘Don’t go far,’ said Odette. ‘And don’t get lost.’
‘I won’t.’
Albert lit up.
Jimmie came back with a fish and laid it on a leaf. Albert said he’d give them some potatoes but Odette said she had rice, so he said he’d bring some wine down later, when the guests were quieter and he didn’t need to watch the reception.
In 1965, the British Government had delivered their terms for Mauritius’s independence from the Empire. These terms hinged on the premise that Mauritius relinquish the Lesser Dependency of the Chagos Archipelago to the UK in exchange for £3 million. The archipelago and others besides would become known as BIOT – British Indian Ocean Territory – and the native population (the Ilois) would remain British subjects. A year later, Britain and the USA signed a deal stating that the island of Diego Garcia would ‘become available for defence purposes for fifty years’ and plans outlining the methods to be used in the uprooting, shipping, and dumping of 1,800 Ilois were presented in a file marked ‘SECRET’. ‘SECRET’ was also the notice applied to the payments the US made to the British in exchange for the acquisition and depopulation of the islands: payments of $14 million in the form of written-off expenses incurred in the research and development of the Polaris submarine/missile system.
‘The real impression of power came from the lagoon, and the gigantic assemblage of naval power and supplies. I could count seventeen ships riding at anchor. Thirteen were cargo vessels, stuffed to the gunwales with tanks and ammunition, fuel and water supplies, rockets and jeeps and armoured personnel carriers, and ready to sail at two hours’ notice. There was an atomic submarine, the USS Corpus Christi – a batch of crewmen were even now sailing by in their liberty boat, off to see the delights of the Rock, and presumably, to ferret out some of the eighty women assigned to the base; there was the submarine tender USS Proteus, which I had last seen in Holy Loch, in Scotland, and which was packed with every last item, from a nut to a nuclear warhead, that a cruising submariner could ever need; and there was the strange white-painted former assault ship, the USS Lasalle, now converted into a floating headquarters for the US Central Command, and in the bowels of which admirals and generals played “Games of Survivable War in the Mid-East Theater”, with the white paint keeping their electronic battle directors and intelligence decoders cool in the Indian Ocean sun.’
(In 1984, Simon Winchester visited Diego Garcia. The island is off-limits to unauthorised personnel, but in the few hours that he was allowed to anchor in the lagoon, this is what he saw.)
From Outposts, published by Hodder and Stoughton, 1985
‘Although we have no information, some deaths are no doubt bound to have occurred among the islanders in the normal course of events’
From a letter to Mr John Hastings from a Foreign Office official, 16 August 1976
This Book is Dedicated to Ilois Who Died as a Result of their Removal from the Chagos Archipelago, Including:
ELAINE AND MICHELE MOUZA: mother and child, committed suicide
LEONE RANGASAMY: born on Peros Banhos, drowned herself because she was prevented from going back
TARENNE CHIATOUX: committed suicide, no job, no roof
VOLFRIN FAMILY: DAISY VOLFRIN: no food for three days, obtained Rs 3 (about 20p) and no more as Public Assistance. Died through poverty
JOSUE AND MAUDE BAPTISTE: poverty – no roof, no food, committed suicide
Source: Comite Ilois Organisation Fraternelle
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book could not have been written without reference to the following organisations, authors and publications.
Francoise Botte. ‘The Ilois Community and the Ilois Women’ (University of Mauritius, unpublished thesis. 1980)
George Champion and the 1966 Society for Diego Garcians in Exile
Comite Ilois Organisation Fraternelle
Diego Garcia International Solidarity Committee (UK) ‘Diego Garcia, 1975: the debate over the base and the Island’s former inhabitants. Hearings before the Special Sub-committee on investigations of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, 94th Congress’ (US Government Printing Office, Washington, 1975)
The Joint Ilois Committee
John Madeley. Diego Garcia: a contrast to the Falklands (The Minority Rights Group, London, WC2N 5NT. 1982)
Robert Scott. Limuria. The Lesser Dependencies of Mauritius (Oxford University Press. 1961)
Herve Sylva. ‘Report on the survey on the conditions of living of the Ilois community displaced from the Chagos Archipelago’ (Unpublished report commissioned by the Minister of Social Security, Port Louis, Mauritius. 1981)
The Sunday Times
The Washington Post
The Guardian
Simon Winchester. Outposts – Journeys to the surviving relics of the British Empire (Hodder and Stoughton, 1985)
Special thanks to John Madeley, for his help and encouragement, and also to John Loader, for correcting me.
