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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…
