Island of Shame by Vine David

Author:Vine, David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2009-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

THE BOTTOM OF THE BOTTOM

Arriving in Mauritius and the Seychelles, islanders like Rita found themselves in positions vulnerable to ethnic and racial discrimination, as Chagossians and as Afro-Mauritians. Their arrival at times of heightened social tensions was noted with considerable anxiety by many of their hosts sensitive to new economic competition. During the first years in Mauritius, the word “Ilois” shifted from a term of self-identification to a term of insult, pronounced derisively by some Mauritians ZZZEEL-wah.1 As anthropologist Iain Walker noted, many Mauritians began to use the term to describe any person “behaving in an antisocial or immoral fashion.”2 In the Seychelles, Chagossians heard curses of “Anara!” a word suggesting they had no identity, that they were soulless, uncivilized pagans, and that as a people, they were the lowest of the low. Others in both nations were called sovaz—savage—and bet—stupid. Many heard people shout, “Go back to the islands!”3

Francine Volfrin, who was removed from Diego Garcia and then Peros Banhos as a teenager in the 1970s, remembered walking to school from their home in the Seychelles, a shack on a relative’s land, with neighbors throwing apricots fallen from the trees at her and her siblings. Some spit on them. The neighbors were very mean and cruel, she said. Some would say she and her family had not been vaccinated and would make them sick. (This was a common insult aimed at the islanders. If they had not previously been vaccinated, they were vaccinated upon arrival in the Seychelles. And indeed, evidence points to the opposite of the insult’s accusation: Living in the Seychelles and Mauritius has actually made many Chagossians sick.)

Discrimination extended beyond verbal abuse. Employment discrimination was common by Mauritian “employers who favor local Mauritians.”4 In the Seychelles, discriminatory treatment began with the housing of the islanders in a local prison, while Moulinie & Co. “staff” stayed in hotels.5 This discrimination compounded difficulties Chagossians had in finding jobs because they lacked the social connections important to finding work in these small island societies.

Desperate to find work and earn money after their arrival, many used “intermediates” to connect them with employers and jobs. When they were to be paid, the intermediates took most of their salaries. Many intermediates and employers also appear to have preyed upon Chagossians’ innumeracy and relative inexperience with cash. Botte explains how the exploitation worked, particularly against women: “These ‘intermediates’ explained to the employers that these Ilois women are not used to money and some money could be given to the intermediates from the salary of that poor maid-servant or washerwoman. These Mauritian employers preferred to engage the Ilois women because [they] did not know about labour law and the employers had only to exchange a Rs10 note into many coins to make the employees believe that it was much money.” Over time, women realized that they were being cheated and became more assertive with Mauritian employers.6

In Mauritius, and to a lesser extent in the Seychelles, Chagossians entered an environment of long-standing racism and discrimination against people of mostly or entirely African descent, known locally as Creoles.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.