Song of Chagos: Hunger and Heroes, Songs Across the Sea

By Valerie Van Haltern

Book II Song of Chagos: Hunger and Heroes, Songs Across the Sea

A long sea voyage to a distant land after losing hearth and home…
broken hearts adrift at sea…
a storm of memories in the midst of treacherous weather…
an imagination running wild
releasing the bonds of a world entrapped by greed
a future brewing with unknowns….
finding ways to live, called “surviving”
Music, dreams and a call for justice…

After the long sea passage from the Chagos Archipelago, Jean and mother, Rose, find new friends and old friends in Mauritius. They lay a path for “survival” which will guide them through decades of impossible odds.

Book I Song of Chagos: Hearts in Exile
Book II Song of Chagos: Hunger and Heroes, Songs Across the Sea
Book III Song of Chagos: Hardship to Harmony, Hands United

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 22, 2014
• ISBN: 9781595948731

Book preview

Song of Chagos

HUNGER and HEROES, SONGS ACROSS THE SEA

Includes: Jean in an Era

Valerie ariel Van Haltern

Wingspan Press

Copyright © 2014 by Valerie Van Haltern

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, settings and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, settings or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in review.

Published in the United States and the United Kingdom

by WingSpan Press, Livermore, CA

The WingSpan name, logo and colophon are the trademarks of WingSpan Publishing.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Van Haltern, Valerie.

Song of Chagos : hunger and heroes, songs across the sea / Valerie Ariel Van Haltern.

pages cm. – (Song of Chagos series)

ISBN: 978-1-59594-535-8 (pbk.)

ISBN: 978-1-59594-873-1 (e-book)

1. Refugees—Fiction. 2. Chagossians—Fiction. 3. Diego Garcia (British Indian Ocean Territory)—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3622.A58549 S66 2014

813—dc23

2014943557

First edition 2014

Printed in the United States of America

Cover photo: Julia Bertrand, Jensen Beach, Florida

Other photos: Sabrina Jean, Crawley, West Sussex UK

www.wingspanpress.com

This book is dedicated to those who honor the highest law, the law that heals when mortals fail, the law of the heart, the spirit, the four immeasurables, the law of Creator. It is dedicated to the gift of awareness, the awareness of the blessings with which we have been entrusted to share….

Acknowledgements

Questions came up after Book I, SONG OF CHAGOS, HEARTS IN EXILE. One question came up often. The question: Who is Ti Jean exactly? Is Ti Jean based on the Chagossian artist, Clement Siatous? Is Jean based on Michel Vincatessin? Oliver Bancoult? Allen Vincatassin? Who exactly does Jean represent?

It would be extremely unfair to any of these heroes to say that Jean accurately portrays any one of them and what they have personally endured and accomplished on their unique paths to survival and freedom.

Like most characters Jean is a composite, a composite of what I’ve learned from the many heroes I met while getting to know a wonderful group of people full of inspiration, faith and great purpose. Jean may not come close to all the good and great works and hard work I’ve seen going on in Chagossian communities but he makes a stab at it nonetheless and comes from the heart.

Another question came up posed by various Sea Turtle and Environmental Groupies (I count myself among this group for better or for worse) – I came upon a certain degree of criticism in that it was the opinion of the criticizers that this book series supports the islanders resettlement at the expense of sea turtles, the marine preserve, the sand fleas, the military and whatever else.

I will say this: I like to think that we all want to protect the reef, the turtles, the birds and all living creatures that bless this earth. I would like to think that we all understand and see the wisdom of balance if our planet is going to continue to support life as we know it. I do not want to see another thousand birds dying on the coast of Florida, having starved to death in their migration because we have ruined the resources. I do not want to see more oil spilled in the Gulf or anywhere else. I do not want to see helpless penguins dying near Nightingale from oil and total incompetence. I do not want to see the harm of projects like Keystone.

Maybe if all of us can reach into our higher selves into our hearts where unconditional love resides we can start to get along and care for our Mother Earth and each other. Enough damage has been done to wildlife and humans already.

Some of us carry a stone called Apache Tear. This stone stands as a reminder of Wounded Knee, the Sand Creek Massacre and all the other massacres, the clubbing of seals, the horrible brutality against whales, dolphins, sea turtles, horses, elephants, bears, tigers, birds and all living things, the exile of the Chagossian islanders, the imprisonment of the innocent like Leonard Peltier, the prejudice against minorities or someone of a different culture or religion, the brutal claiming of Tibet. This stone reminds us that enough pain has been suffered and that enough tears have been shed. All the suffering that ever needs to be suffered in order to learn lessons on this earth has already been suffered a thousand times over.

Do the Chagossians have rights? Do the sea turtles have rights? Do the birds have rights? Should our water be clean, our air breathable? Ask yourself that question, not me. I will tell you that it’s all extremely important if we’re going to reside here as human beings together on this earth.

On a final note, I will answer one last question before you ask it: Who is the beautiful teenage girl who survives rape in this book? Does this teenage girl represent a Chagossian woman or girl who made it through the exile?

First of all, human beings and nature might be raped in any number of ways. This particular girl represents each and every one of us, especially those who have faced the whip alone, those who have been left with slim means of survival and, because of limited resources, limited wisdom, the pressures of society and caste system, have fallen on the mercy of the streets, the way of the street in order to cop another meal, another drug, another drink. As you will see, the survival of this one young girl mirrors our condition. Her condition represents demons we have faced or will face no matter how cushy we think our cushion. How will we survive those demons? We could start by waking up.

Here I thank Clement Siatous, gifted artist, for all he has done to share his beautiful memories of Chagos in his art. Clement continues to share much with the community and the children. He continues as an important guiding light. I thank Clement for kindness shown to me in answering questions delivered in less than perfect Creole.

I thank Julia Bertrand, gifted artist and photographer, for her photographs including the one on the cover of this book. Julia traveled to Mauritius with me and kept a wonderful photographic record of the interviews and important sites in Chagossian communities.

I thank Sabrina Jean who must work 35 hours a day, 10 days a week. Bless you Sabrina for all you give and do for others, especially for the youth and your recent photographs of the communities in the UK.

I thank UK Chagos Islands Support Association for their hard work in the local and international community, for keeping everyone posted on the latest news and necessities.

I thank Bernadette Dugasse for coming through with a gracious heart and much giving even when under the weather. I thank Bernadette for her inexhaustible spirit and great comments.

I thank Iain Orr for referring me on to helpful archives, for his universal viewpoint, his ability to pick out the timeless nuggets.

I thank Corinne Van Houten Asleme, Deck Deckert and Art Noble for great advice and important contributions as writers, editors, and, researchers.

I thank Mohan Rai, gifted shaman and teacher and all the Wisdom-keepers at the Shamanic Research Institute in Kathmandu for priceless teachings and ceremonies.

I thank Mattie and David Davis-Wolfe founders of Sacred Circles Institute in Washington State. Without Mattie and Dave and Mohan I imagine the books, the research, the travel diaries and interviews would have been locked away for good and would be waiting for another lifetime to be arranged in final form. Due to the painful stories and conditions I encountered in my research I often found I had to put the work aside for weeks in order to regain composure and have a go at it again.

In the events we find not only physical illness but spiritual illness as well. How could the Illois endure so much and live to tell it? Where had we been at the time? For hours I sat looking over the interviews, the faces, the notes on upheaval, the exile, the face of an old woman alone, a burial site of an ancestor left to ruin, an old photo of a strong gentle man working the plantation, the copra drying beds, the children running happily about, the dogs, the beloved pets, the chickens being fed and daily routines being carried out, then - hundreds of newly homeless standing in never ending lines holding a mattress and a bag of whatever they could carry on the long voyage – there waiting in the heat the aged and the ageless against their will, home lost, pets lost, waiting for the prison ship to accomplish the final uprooting and carry them to a distant land.

Who is responsible for what has happened? Who will remedy the situation? Who among us will figure that out and contribute? Who will see that we owe the Chagossian children our attention? How we have failed their parents and grandparents.

The same goes for the indigenous people on this planet, those who have been wronged and have had their lands taken, their livelihoods destroyed, their sacred graves and burial places disturbed, their water and air contaminated.

If we open our eyes we will see many places to go and contribute to right past wrongs.

To all who helped guide the way for me in difficult times: the Chagossian elders, Mattie, Dave, Mohan. You help me speak the truth and finish this phase of the project with a whole heart instead of a broken one. My eternal gratitude. Thank you.

We learn to survive or how to be teachers when we learn from great teachers. I have been very fortunate in that respect.

Mitakye Oyasin - We are all related.

Valerie ariel Van Haltern

Indian River and Sebastian Inlet

May 2014

OPEN SONG OF CHAGOS

A journey changes a person. A person grows bigger or smaller, adds another layer or, loses every layer down to the bone. A heart turns to mush or, becomes a center of compassion and understanding. A journey uncovers mystery-faces never seen before. In a journey a person sees the real face of a friend or, the real face of an enemy.

A person may live an entire lifetime and never see the real face of an enemy. The enemy may be far away shuffling papers behind a desk, or punching buttons on a computer or waving a hand across a screen or may be right over the hill, a sniper behind a rock or, the enemy may be circling in the sky overhead, looking at you with microscopic vision.

The enemy makes announcements from afar, sends representatives out, human and drone.

The enemy sends out paperwork in the mail with your name on it, issues orders for a new tax, a new bill to be paid or, you hear an explosion, a gun going off, a siren down the street.

A person may never see the face of the enemy demanding ransom, may never see the face of the enemy with finger on the trigger, eye on the button.

A person may never see the hand holding the key to the jail.

Another person might spend an entire lifetime knowing what the face of the enemy looks like. They have looked into the very eyes of the enemy. They have seen the equipment and the guns and smelled the enemy’s gunpowder and, the enemy’s breath. They have felt the enemy’s death ray frying them alive. They have seen the enemy take home and hearth. They know every detail of the enemy’s face, how the enemy moves, the tone of the enemy’s voice. They do not have to imagine or guess what the enemy looks like in camouflage or suit or, gentleman’s uniform. They do not have to sit for days on hold waiting to speak to an automated voice on a computerized phone line. They do not have to hope that the enemy will come out of hiding so they will know what he looks like. No, for certain people the enemy has come right up to their doorstep and looked them in the eye. The enemy has walked into their home, trespassed on hearth and table and cleared everything away. The enemy has claimed or destroyed everything they hold dear. The enemy has taken control of sacred ground where ancestors rest. Yes, some people know exactly what the enemy looks like. They have been force fed the fire of hell. They live with ruin and heartbreak night and day.

How does one revive the art and beauty of life when living falls to the meanest kind of survival with nothing to aid but broken pieces, a breath displaced, a heart disemboweled?

A journey changes a person as does seeing an enemy face to face. Once you’ve seen the enemy there is no turning back.

Once you identify the face, the eyes, when the sulfur of the first match reaches your nose, when you hear the explosion, when the ground shakes, your every doubt, your every denial, your every excuse and procrastination explodes in a nose dive.

Stark realization awakens you, every hitch, every groove, every fiber….. but alas, the time for waking up is way past due.

A journey changes a person. It wakes one up to many things like the intimacy of ones own extinction.

Mystery faces lose their mystery when they’re breathing down your neck, when they look you in the eye and call your number. The only mystery left in the end is how you will take it, the death you will die, or, how you will swallow the way you survive.

Part I

Chapter One: WALKING WITH MEMORY

We have come this far, this far

Woman, child, man

Hear our songs across the sea

This far, this far

Minni knew

You would take

And keep taking

Remember her words:

"There’s one thing

you cannot take

you cannot take

my death away,

my death belongs to me."

We have come this far, this far

Woman, child, man

Hear our songs across the sea

My LIFE belongs to me

My HOME belongs to me

We have come

This far, this far

Displaced and forgotten

But we

Have not forgotten

Woman, child, man

The living

And, the remembered

Hear our songs across the sea,

We have come this far, this far…

When Mitty was painting he could forget things for a while. He could forget the storm blowing up the sea. He could forget the moist eyes around him, the hunger and the pain crowded together in the hold. He could forget all Illois of the Chagos Archipelago were being forced into exile and would be discarded somewhere in a strange land. He could forget the strangers who came and took his island home. For a little while he could forget and roam in the paint of his canvas. In the paint, the good memories of home lived on.

The trade winds filled the palms and kept them dancing. The sails of the piroques craft billowed and pulled the eye and heart along to explore the blue waters of the lagoon. Not only did the memories find a safe haven in the paint, they were allowed to live again and again in the happiest of seasons.

What was life but a collection of good memories anyway?

Yes, Mitty could forget for a little while and that was important.

Why go over the devastation again and again? Why look it dead in the eye and choke on it and writhe in the pain and insanity of it all, the cruel things a conqueror will do to a remote island people?

The long sea journey would separate him forever from his island. The journey would leave him discarded and homeless in Mauritius. But nothing would separate him from the paint and the world that lived there, the world no government could touch.

He could forget the politics of London and Washington and Port Louis, how the takers of the world, with the aid of their smart politicians and armies, took hearth and home. He could forget their words, the way they spoke them, breathing that breath corrupt with untruth.

But the canvas – ah, there was nothing like the canvas and the living paint there. It had a different way of speaking, a truth like no other, a being, pure and unadulterated.

Streams of blue and green lift the breath of the lagoon.

Here I see truth, he reflects, so why not forget the rest.

But he could not forget Ti Jean’s lingering question and how Jean, in all his youth and innocence, yearned for an answer that would take care of the days and years ahead in exile.

Mitty? Jean prompts again.

Can you paint my mother from memory? The way she is now?

He turns to his young friend and smiles an old man’s smile – a smile that does not expect much in return only to give of itself.

Perhaps Jean expected something simple, something cut and dry, something entirely black or something entirely white, the definitive piece of wisdom or advice, a nugget that would solve the challenges ahead in exile. How was one to survive?

How could one manage new life in a foreign land? How could one hold onto the good things of the past, the beauty, the wisdom, the culture, the music, identity itself and ones roots?

What did an old man know about exile or surviving in Mauritius or starting all over again in a distant land? Mitty admitted, his entire worth as an individual, his abilities lay tied up in seventy years of living in the islands. He knew his home. He knew memories, memories, different kinds of memories, memories that mattered and those that did not matter at all.

Memories.

Isn’t that what his young friend had asked? Wasn’t that the beginning of all this?

Slowly and with care, he repeats Jean’s question, Can I paint your mother from memory?

Yes, Can you Mitty?

Well, Jean…

My mother, like she is now after everything that’s happened? I mean how she is, still beautiful but different after losing Grand-mere, our home, our cemeteries, our pets? Something that shows it all Mitty, everything that happened to us?

I think your mother…

She looks so tired Mitty, cramped here in the hold on that small mattress. The storms been blowing all day. It doesn’t let up. How can we go on breathing this air? They never opened the portals. And this light, the way the bulbs keep blinking and turn everything yellow. It’s kind of spooky, isn’t it? Can you paint my mother, all this when we get to Mauritius? Paint everything that’s happened?

Jean…

Look at her , the way she looks. What is she seeing? What is she thinking? How can you paint if you’re not sure?

She knows we can’t go back Jean..

Never?

Not without a fight.

She looks so different today, Mitty.

We all look different today Jean.

Mitty studies Rose and cannot help but see the difference – how five stormy days at sea have taken their toll.

Is it possible to paint your mother and all that’s there under her expression, the memories, her thoughts? We’ll all remember this journey in our own way, the people we’ve lost, the things we’ve lost.

Mitty goes back to painting. He makes a careful stroke in the sail of the piroques craft to show the wind calming at twilight. He adds a stroke or two to the palm trees and a sunset haze soothes the fronds.

If I paint from the head, the mind, the ego, Jean, I doubt if I’d get any of my memories right or your mother’s. Ah, but if I paint from the heart.

What do you mean Mitty, painting from the heart?

I guess the way you feel something and understand it in the big picture of life. I better tell you something though. Painting from the heart isn’t easy. It can be very tricky because it requires having a balanced heart, a clear vision. That’s when it works best when the eyes of the heart see clearly – when you really understand people, animals, plants and you can see through their eyes. If I come from my own pain or anger or personal imbalance or opinion then what do I see, what do I have to work with but my own limitations, a real roller coaster of emotion. What am I painting then? Merely a reflection of my own imbalance, I suppose.

What are you saying Mitty?

"Well, feelings can cloud the heart and make us blind to the big picture. Your heart might be full of anger, pain. How much of that do you transfer to the canvas? How does it affect what you’ve decided to represent? How does it block you from getting into the subject you’re painting? It’s like your music, the way you drum. Better to step back and listen to the music and let it speak for itself. Better if you don’t get in