Spilling it out
I cut my hair short after so long. To help make oil containment booms, they said. Gave it away to the ocean so that she could heal. My aunt told me I was brave and this made me laugh. No, the brave ones are those who are facing this dark, slimy and stomach-churning monster every day. The frontliners. Staying strong to protect our ocean despite the pain, breathing difficulty, irritations... Could this disaster have been prevented? To date, so many questions remain unanswered.
On 25 July, the MV Wakashio, a Japanese bulk carrier, ran aground on a coral reef off the South East coast of the island, near Pointe d’Esny, in an area of wetlands and close to the marine park of Blue Bay. For 12 days, nothing was done; the Mauritian population was led to believe that everything was under control and there was no risk of an oil spillage. The worst-case scenario happened though. The ship leaked at least 800 tons of oil into the ocean. Ironically, Mauritius was recently positioned as SUS (sustainable) Island. While we, volunteers, were quick to act, using natural sorbent like sugarcane bagasse and hair to make booms, the government’s inaction was baffling. Of course, their hands can never get dirty. Dirty hands are for the rest of us; the poor, powerless, ordinary people. Looking at the photos of these politicians in the press, standing there in front of this mess with their stupid smile, doing nothing but posing for the camera, I was reminded of this quote by Jean-Paul Sartre:
You cling so tightly to your purity, my lad! How terrified you are of sullying your hands. Well, go ahead then, stay pure! What good will it do, and why even bother coming here among us? Purity is a concept of fakirs and friars. But you, the intellectuals, the bourgeois anarchists, you invoke purity as your rationalization for doing nothing. Do nothing, don’t move, wrap your arms tight around your body, put on your gloves.
Worse still, instead of thanking its people, the Prime Minister implied that we were harmful and threatened us with fines if we got too close to Southern beaches. One might argue that it is to protect us. But is it to protect us that some journalists have been denied access to the Prime Minister’s press conference? What about all the lies on the national TV channel? And the fact that BBC News was temporarily unavailable in Mauritius, right after he gave an embarrassing interview? I used to wonder if freedom was a myth. I no longer do. Today, we aren’t even free to be informed of the country’s situation. As much as the sight of this dark and stinky monster, the government’s lies make me want to throw up. I am not the only one. Mauritians have been bottling up their anger for a while now and this whole situation seems to have led to the beginning of the Mauritian Spring, with the hashtag #maurevolution currently trending.
It seems unbelievable that it was so quiet just a few months ago, the streets of my city echoing with emptiness. Now, with only 2 active cases recorded on 16 August, the COVID-19 is nothing more than a bad memory for most Mauritians. Before the pandemic, I used to lead a bit of a bohemian lifestyle; going to the beach every weekend, thankful to live on a small invulnerable island, and all of a sudden, this life turned into a waiting room. Every day, I would wait in front of my TV, wearing my anxiety as a scarf: tied around my throat. Because I knew the bad news would keep coming. So, I would wait and count. Count the number of new cases, the number of deaths, telling myself that tomorrow, my mother might be one of them. In April, she lost her sister. It wasn’t COVID-19, it was cancer. A few weeks before the lockdown, she went to South Africa for her treatment and never came back. We couldn’t be present for her funeral. Her sons were also in Mauritius when it happened. It was quick. Brutal. I can hardly imagine the pain they must have felt.
I thought, perhaps naively, that when all this would be over, I would be happier than I used to be, I would laugh louder, spend more time outside. That I’d embrace the hours and prevent them from slipping through my fingers. Little did I know that things would get worse after the confinement. I hardly had time to mourn a loss that there would be another one, and everyone would hate on 2020 as if to say that the situation is already so bad that it can only get better.
Amidst the sea of absurdity, writing has remained both a necessity and a haven. Sometimes, it is the only form of freedom possible. Sometimes, it is a way to make sure that our voices are not muffled.
For me, writing is a lot about understanding others, trying to decipher even the most complex personalities. Writing the story ‘’I, Shaitan’’ is also a forgiving process. The first version was harsher. I initially believed that the narrator was to be an angry teenager, then following my mentor’s book recommendations, it became clear that the narrator would be a child. Through her voice, I discovered a softness and tenderness I wouldn’t have expected. A certain form of naive poetry defined by childhood.
I have always wanted to learn more about the lives of Mauritians during the Second World War – a topic that has not been much explored in Mauritian literature. Among my friends, not many realize that some 10,000 Mauritians voluntarily joined the army – and although I did not initially plan to talk about it in this story, I realized that it could have impacted greatly on the personality of the main character, Nani, and that it could help explain some of her actions and weird behavior even decades later, for instance, her relationship with food, knowing that many Mauritian families were poor and survived on manioc during WWII.
List of resources used:
Fault Lines - Nancy Huston
Mauritians in the Second World War - Amit Bhoonah
Surnaturel et société : l’explication magique de la maladie et du malheur à Khénifra (Maroc) – Saâdia Radi
The Snow Queen – Hans Christian Andersen
We the Animals - Justin Torres
