Karen Fleetwood & Laëtitia Saint-Loubert
The characters and events in this story, even if they are partly inspired by reality, whether reproduced faithfully or altered, remain fictitious.
Friday, May 11, 2012. Paris, musée du quai Branly, Claude Lévi-Strauss Theater, conference on ‘The archaeology of colonial slavery.’
Her badge read: Tahina Bellon, La Réunion. In the center of the auditorium, two microphones available to her, the young woman mechanically pushed back her glasses. Everything was under control. A red dress with mid-length sleeves flattered her brown skin. She had done her hair in a bun. Traveling by taxi meant she had been able to wear heels, which wouldn’t have been possible on the subway.
Her voice a little thin, but sure of herself, she faced the archaeologists, historians and curious-minded individuals who had seated themselves on the long wooden benches set out in tiers. She took a few seconds to gather herself and then, contrary to all expectations, read out a poem.
Song IX
A mother dragged her only daughter along the shore to sell her to the whites.
Oh, mother! You carried me in your womb; I am the first fruit of your love. What have I done to merit slavery? I have soothed you in your old age; for you, I have farmed the land; for you, I have gathered fruit; for you, I have waged war on the fish in the river; I have protected you from the cold; I have moved you into the fragrant shade of the trees during hot weather; I watched over you as you slept, and I removed troublesome insects from your face. Oh, mother, what will become of you without me? The money that you receive will not bring you another daughter; you will fall into poverty, and my greatest sorrow will be that I cannot help you.
Oh, mother! Do not sell your only daughter.
Fruitless prayers! She was sold, weighed down with irons, driven onto the ship, and she left behind her dear and pleasant homeland forever.[1]
Sobs seemed to muffle her voice, but bringing her rather unorthodox introduction to a close, she was already resuming. A map of the island filled the screen behind her: its relief, its three cirques. Her gratitude expressed – thanks for having been invited and her honor at being there among them – she went back in time.
‘On February 25, 2007,’ she said, ‘Cyclone Gamede beat down on La Réunion, obliging its eight hundred thousand inhabitants to shut themselves away, cramped up in their apartment or house, surrounded by outdoor furniture and plants that they had been forced to bring in off balconies.
‘At the start, Gamede was a cyclone like any other,’ she stated.
‘While the radio delivered its traditional advice – boil tap water before consuming it, don’t touch electricity cables that have fallen into yards – candles and bottles of water stood ready. Households with sheet metal roofs feared for their frail walls and roofing. Households in solid structures knew that exploding patio doors could affect themselves as well as their neighbors.
‘The Reunionese love their cyclones,’ continued Tahina Bellon. ‘They like to witness such spectacles, at least once a year. They hope the bad weather won’t claim too many victims, but they savor those days when…’
Not wishing to prolong her silence, she hastened to finish her sentence.
‘Those days when everything stops.’
While she turned the page of her notes, her head hammered with reproach. What was she thinking, speaking about her compatriots as savages addicted to the misfortune of others? Had she put herself in the place of the wives whose husbands were carried away by a torrent sweeping across the road? Had she forgotten the despair of the children waiting for a father or grandfather who failed to come home? The fishermen delayed at sea. A stockbreeder who had gone out to gather his flock of goats and was blown into a ravine by the wind.
She was suddenly so ashamed that her legs grew heavy, as if the uncalled-for words were traveling through her body, weighing on the muscles of her lower limbs. She adjusted her dress, gingerly lifted one foot and then the other. It had been well worth the effort of preparing so carefully when she let her mouth spout nonsense that chilled the room and left her seeming heartless.
Or scatterbrained.
Quick, stop recalling this wretched cyclone. By trying too hard to turn her native rock into a place without equal, where cyclones were cherished for their devastating power, she would only succeed in being taken for a sales rep selling cut-price exoticism. An island where nature proved more ferocious than elsewhere, its inhabitants considering themselves champions of a fate accepted joyfully and philosophically. Each year, they awaited their exceptional cyclones. One was sure to come. When it passed, they boasted about…
What? Being heroes? Having the deadliest cyclones in the world?
It was both incongruous and inaccurate.
*
The door handle creaked softly. Dressed in a dark Aran jumper, Luc slipped into the semi-darkness. They had not gone up to Paris together, being used to living each by their own rhythm. Luc Berman, doctoral student, aspired to specialize in the archaeology of disability. He wielded a shovel with more assurance than others. It was a sight to behold as he extricated the skeleton, felt the bones, began to study them, formulated tactile hypotheses awaiting his confirmation.
They often worked together. At least, they both sat down at the computer, in the white and beige room. Tahina ran her fingers over the keyboard nervously. Luc caressed the nape of her neck, leaning over to help her relax. It was a sensuality that he loved and that didn’t distract the young woman from her investigations.
*
Tahina Bellon focused on her notes and skipped a few sentences. There was no point in adding that metal sheets had blown away and that, as usual, the low-water crossings had disappeared beneath the flow of water. She scrapped the tree trunks that had blocked numerous roads. Like a divinity in a rush to move on to other things, in a breath she repaired the ferns that had lost their fronds in the strong winds, she diverted the water that was tempted to plow furrows through the middle of the cane fields and carry off a vast quantity of earth.
Go on, scram! Farewell, cyclone, that was enough nonsense for today. She wasn’t there to slip into sensationalism.
The key facts remained. Powerless, Saint-Paul’s marine cemetery had endured Gamede’s fury. The tongue of black sand that separated it from the sea had melted away. Water had infiltrated it – coming from the sky and rising from the sea. Billions of drops without cease. An army of miniscule creatures running everywhere, in a mad stamping. At one with the strong winds and originating in a phenomenal sea, high waves had crushed all that they could. They had streamed through the broad pathways, overflowed.
A section of the outer walls had given way. Some of the tombs had collapsed; a family vault had keeled over.
The kingdom of the dead was no longer at peace.
Suffering and scandal outside the cemetery too, where bones were brutally restored from the depths of the earth. What were delicately referred to as human remains. A battery of giant tongues, the swell pounded and hollowed, shifted and overturned, until an almost vertical section formed in the sand, showcasing the remains. Some jumbled up, some still linked to others. The Indian Ocean had extracted these human traces from the bowels of Saint-Paul and left them exposed on the sand.
To be seen and known by everyone. Corpses, bodies, bones, relics, remains.
Let all who want to see come.
*
Pausing for a few seconds, the young woman considered, then reassured herself. No doubt a nervous movement, like those that sometimes make your hand shake or your eyelid twitch. You are no longer in control of your body, but it lasts for such a short time that you don’t give in to panic. She managed to overcome the slight trembling of the lips that had taken her by surprise. The quiver passed through her and disappeared. The Monster dozed off again. His strength had diminished over the months. She had buried him deep. Suppressed him so much that no person or thing could dislodge him.
Having provided the backdrop of cyclone and swell, she finally spoke of the professional element. From June 15 to 24, 2011, archaeologists, historians and students had carried out an archaeological survey.[2] On the screen, an aerial view of the site beside the ocean, then a moving crater of sand. She herself can be seen, then another archaeologist, sand stuck to their legs, caps on their heads and brushes in their hands. Her again, still with a brush in one hand, the other holding her hat on. The next photo showed five archaeologists or students, legs bare or covered up, bags full of instruments, buckets, a bottle of water.
Among them, three skeletons. Or rather, all of them among the three skeletons.
A classic series of excavations, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. An hour for lunch all together in a restaurant close by. Instructed by the head of operations, students found themselves entrusted with clearing away earth, delicate excavation, drawing up records, responsibility for one area of the dig. Whatever their role, each was looking for answers. Who were these people buried there, these human remains that Cyclone Gamede had brought into the public eye?
A friendly atmosphere, a series of excavations like any other. Yet on this island where fourmis i marche sous la terre, de moune i connaît,[3] information and rumors spread very quickly. The discretion that governed the running of a dig was going to have to withstand hype and crowds.
Before getting properly started, the team had marked out rectangles and demarcated them using string. The checkerboard very quickly became a joy to behold. An initial stake, then a second, pull the string taut and continue until one square has been obtained, then several. Respecting the surveyor’s instructions, the archaeologists had divided the surface of their site into squares. Childhood tarts on which mothers place a dainty grid made up of strips of pie crust pastry.
*
Being an archaeologist was hard on the body, but Tahina Bellon was in the prime of life. From the moment she put on her broad-brimmed hat, nothing serious could happen. An elegant accessory and a graceful touch in a series of excavations where the sand barely allowed you the chance to get dirty. It was still hot for the time of year. It was no longer summer but, on the sheltered west coast of the island, there were no half-measures where the temperature was concerned.
Burning black sand. In Saint-Paul, as in L’Étang-Salé. I pouak.[4] However, early in the morning, there was no need for gloves. The pleasure of the flesh and the emotion of mixing with people buried there long ago were all hers. Her hands passed back and forth around her first skeleton, bringing a sense of fulfillment that she was unable to confide to anyone, neither at the present moment nor later on. Patiently remove the earth, her physical stamina put to the test. A leap of the heart when the object finally appeared, a reward for the time spent believing – mind, body and soul. Rigorous work and scientific stringency: they had excavated, read, compiled, confirmed. And striven for a painful memory.
Two cemeteries had existed. The one that everyone knew about, prized by tourists, and next to it but below ground, another that was unknown. An extension of the official one. Inside the seaside cemetery: the whites and the free. Outside, in a sandy area by the sea: slaves. Documents from the start of the 19th century testified to it.
Once she had overcome her fear of disappointing, her determination had continued unchecked. Not morbid. Nothing violent or scandalous. On the contrary, to reveal what was sacred in this humanity. Death itself didn’t really interest her. But the dead did. Their position and the contents of the graves, if there were any, led toward a culture, a collection of thoughts and beliefs, of protections and fears, of joys and hopes. Toward a humanity both similar and different, toward ancestors that the Creole language was unable to put into words.
No need to be present on the island all the time to divine what was said when the cyclone had left after turning the skeletons upside down. The earth was round; human word travelled fast. Being born in this small land connected her ad vitam aeternam to the word that emerged from it. Caught between mockery and skepticism, some poked fun at the sight of archaeological excavations on La Réunion. Others called it sacrilege. Why not let these dead rest in peace? A curse? Very quickly, tongues started to wag. Slaves or not? People spoke of epidemics. Who could guarantee that the excavations wouldn’t cause the plague germ to reappear? People evoked pirates, shipwrecks. Or even people condemned to death and not worthy of being buried with honest folk.
Born in this land, she hadn’t wanted to be a historian. Being one of those who make or unmake the past had terrified her. She preferred to excavate.
*
Seven evaluation trenches in the first two days. Graves had been found in five of them; a careful and precise record had been made using drawing and photography. Above all, to observe the way in which the skeletons had been placed. Then to establish – if possible – the chronology of the burials and to finally study the receptacles, any grave goods. Which would provide an idea of practices and rituals.
The other six days had been devoted to unearthing the graves. The bodies were laid out along a north-east/south-west axis, shut up in caskets whose form was identifiable thanks to the few pieces of wood found and to a survey of the nails. However, some of the deceased had been buried directly in the earth. Almost all had their heads turned toward the west and their faces directed toward the south (which led to the assumption that the bodies had been manipulated during the descent into the pit), their hands placed on their thorax or lower. The sand, very rapidly infiltrating the tombs and exerting pressure on the bodies, had preserved their shape. Mainly young adults, perhaps even very young. Men and women.
The delicate excavations – using brushes and trowels – had come up against a formidable obstacle: this same sand, fine and damp. The filao trees had a quiet laugh. They had always been expected to stabilize the sand in this coastal zone. They had fulfilled their mission as temple guardians beyond all hope. Guarding the sand and everything else. For over an hour, the trench foundered. However much sand the team removed time and again, the excavation’s hold crumbled into dust.
Elusive sand. It was a test of humility, a race against time. On the morning of June 22, two days before the end of the excavations, she had sensed discouragement commencing. What if the sand proved stronger than them? She was excavating the skeleton of a young female at the time, nearing the skull and freeing the jaw using a brush. Painstaking work, knees in the ground. At a signal from Alain, she paused, moved back a few steps. The photographer immortalized the two beings: the young woman emerging from the sand and herself. She hoped that her desire to be with her young companion could be seen in the photo.
The round of dry biscuits had lasted ten or so minutes. Then they had sunk into the sand again. Suddenly, stop! Beneath her brush, the shout of a find: good fortune that she couldn’t allow to pass by. A stroke of luck that the least bit of carelessness risked destroying forever. She had just freed several mutilated teeth, shaped into a point: one incisor found alone and four others together.
Their hearts were racing, their minds restless with questions and speculation: a slave from Africa? At this stage of the excavation, mutilated teeth found on a single skeleton were not enough to confirm that the site, in its entirety, was a slave burial ground. Yet the discovery gave meaning to the hours spent crouched in the hot sand.
Instinctively, she reached for her pocket, only to realize she couldn’t find her camera. She’d left it in her car, beneath a tree on the other side of the pathway. Leaving the dig quickly, she darted across the shady path, racing like a madwoman. Stunned, the members of the team clutched at one another’s arms to make sure they were not dreaming. Then they scattered, surrendering to the first impulse that crossed their minds.
Alain, the head of operations, did his best to keep onlookers at a distance. Then everything went on as before. The ebb and flow of the ocean and life in the nearby city, the open-air market and the traffic on the Route des Tamarins. The sand slipping steadily away. The blue sky and the gentle sun blessing their discovery.
Zot l’a trouve à nous, astèr écoute à nous. Oublie pas nous, oublie pas chemin. Magine à nous, pioche dans nout’ main, i faut nous obéit la cloche. La houle l’a tire à nous dan’ sab’, l’a mêt’ à nous en l’air. Nous-même le sab’, mais laisse à nous artourne dans la mer. A nous-mêmes de moune debout comme filaos.[5]
The time had come to take away the skeleton. A few clouds had darkened the sky. Alain, sunglasses perched on his very short blond hair, had taken stock of his troops. It wasn’t every day that such progress was made. Be that as it may, enthusiasm should not stand in the way of science.
Shortly after 5:00 p.m., they had both taken a seat in the van that had been sent for them. The skeleton was expected at a conservation lab in Bordeaux, after a layover in Saint-Denis-de-La-Réunion. The bones were later returned to the earth – a fleeting memory, yet respectfully retained. From those beneath the earth to those who walk the earth. Beneath, the pale skeletons sleeping in the black sand. Above, the green grass, the blue of the sky and of the sea. The memorial was inaugurated on December 20.[6] A white stele now stood erect and proud.
***
Now that she had said it all, the Monster rose to the surface again. Her own Loch Ness monster. A real one, not some cheap horror story people told to liven up quiet evenings. Facing a wide-mouthed, embarrassed audience, she let out a deep breath. The air came out of her mouth with a disgraceful hiss. Some thought this was meant to be funny, another whim after the poem. Others looked outside, toward the open-air theater. But all had to face the facts: the young conference speaker was crying, her mouth twisted with pain. Her sobs – long anguish-ridden sounds rising from her throat – seemed to dig a grave into which she was sinking. Her head was spinning so much that she felt as if she were being swallowed by an overflowing pond, a raging lake, a frightening river that only she could see. A body of water swirling beneath her feet. Then a young man wearing an Aran jumper was spotted coming down from one of the top rows and moving toward her. He wanted to take her by the arm and lead her outside, sparing her the painful public exposure of her grief. What he whispered to her could not be heard, but it was thought that a short walk would do her good. ‘Come with me,’ he suggested. ‘We’ll walk along the avenue, under the trees.’ She would lean on his arm. Their walk would end with some stretching. Her body needed to learn how to rid itself of whatever constrained it. One set of exercises wouldn’t be enough, but at that moment the priority was to begin restoring her body’s mechanism.
‘Come with me,’ he insisted.
As he pleaded with her, he was already considering different options. A bath? Impossible for now. A massage, then? Yes, that was it. ‘The conference is over. I’m taking you with me. You’ll rest. A massage of your arms and legs, and you’ll feel better.
‘Don’t keep this bottled up. You can’t. You shouldn’t.’
Tahina, however, refused in a low voice, having calmed down after a glass of water. It was only her emotion; nothing unbearable had happened. Science would not suffer from this: she was the last speaker of the afternoon, so she wasn’t cutting into the speaking time of any of her colleagues. She was just encroaching upon the early evening of those who wanted to take in her account.
She could have held on to the lectern, but she preferred to walk among the audience. She asked for a moment to take her heels off. She had spare shoes in her big handbag. They were less elegant but more comfortable. That morning, she’d wisely avoided telling herself everything would go smoothly – thank goodness she’d envisaged a few hiccups. Shorter now, yet reassured by the cold floor beneath her feet, she noticed a newcomer high up in the audience. Surprised and clearly moved, the interpreter had left his booth to translate the speaker’s words in her presence. There was no other option anyway: Tahina had abandoned the microphone. It then became a two-voice narrative, live, without the intermediary of headsets. The young man’s voice had changed. Less impersonal and lower so as not to disturb the speaker, it was like a soft melody accompanying a pain waiting to be alleviated.
A lot of Reunionese people are interested in the dead, she explained. They came to see us and ask questions. Sometimes, they encouraged us. As long as the human remains were treated with respect, they didn’t object. But some asked us to let the dead rest in peace. We explained, of course, but it wasn’t enough, so we negotiated. It was impossible to allow visitors to walk among the trenches – the shifting sand would have taken away what we had managed to excavate. We did, however, agree to a prayer for the dead a little further away.
Luc had taken a seat in the front row. He was watching her with his hands clasped. The other archaeologists listened. Those specializing in funerary archaeology understood better than the rest. This had nothing to do with cyclones. On the island, communing with the dead was an ordinary form of intimacy. The dead were visited – and not only on All Saints’ Day. They were the other universe.
First you had to be aware of where your kin were buried. In the cemetery of Le Port, in the dust of the west. In that of Sainte-Suzanne, which ran parallel to the main road. In that of Sainte-Rose, near the harbor. In the marine cemetery of Saint-Paul. And in those of Saint-Denis. In the East cemetery, by the sea. A place where one could run, stroll, watch airplanes full of tourists or children returning home. In the cemetery of Sainte-Clotilde, near houses that kept watch. And in that of Prima, in the Chaudron district, a little outside the shopping area. This cemetery was the most modern, with a chapel and a crematorium. Places where you could call if you needed more information. Someone would pick up the phone and answer your questions. The dead were not alone.
The path leading to those final resting places could never be forgotten. Memories were etched there or struggled to take hold. What you had felt that day, walking back to your car parked close by. The fear that had gripped your heart on another day as, like a little ant in the funeral procession, you followed the hearse, which carried the scent of the grave. You wondered how you would live through it, that moment when your dear beloved would leave your field of vision forever. Of course, he or she had already disappeared from sight at the moment when, at home, the casket had been closed. That had been the first terrible moment. Or the second – it depended. For some, the pain came when their loved one departed this life. The chasm between before and after lay there. For others, the devastation came with that dreadful closing of the casket. Up until then, he or she had still been there. No longer alive, but still before your eyes. The moment that sarcophagus was sealed marked the beginning of the end.
In the funeral procession, you came face to face with that other certainty: the earth was about to embrace the wooden casket and deprive you of your loved one’s words, gaze and gestures forever. And you had to accept it, despite the anguish that threatened to tear your heart apart. Cry, it will do you good.
So you had to be familiar with their final resting place. But that was not all. From an early age, you had been prepared to maintain the connection, to come and leave flowers that the salty air would dry out as soon as you turned your back. To caress the gravestone. To clean the little metal plaque attached to the cross. To scour it even, so that the name remained easy to read. At the end of the year, in that month of October when, normally, there were no more taxes left to pay, you took care of what your parents had taken on before you. You withdrew a few bills from the ATM and took them to the man or woman who looked after the grave throughout the year, watering the flowers and keeping an eye on the deteriorating vases.
There was no appointment. You simply showed up at the cemetery and tried your luck. But rare were the times when you didn’t find the caretaker! On those occasions, you would leave the money behind – always paid in cash – along with a scrap of paper with your home phone number on it. A page from an old calendar or a bit of newspaper. The tacit renewal of a nonexistent contract. The man or woman needed to be able to reach you in case of an emergency. After a cyclone, for example. You never knew.
*
Tahina Bellon had experienced death in La Réunion. A few weeks before coming to Saint-Paul, she had lost her grandfather. At first, the patriarch’s life had hung by a thread. He was already in a hazy zone where the soul was beginning to fade. He was still there, but only just. A flicker of light in his eyes, but less and less life in his body. His heart had kept beating, waiting for whatever would finally bring the whole machine to a stop.
Death’s rattle had lasted all night. Death had come and gone, unable to make up its mind. By the time Venus – zétwal katrèr as it is called in La Réunion – shone bright in the sky, Ariste Bellon was gone.
She wasn’t the first to arrive in Bourg-Murat, but she was the only one to whom Philippe, her father, had spoken about laying out the body. The son had transformed his father’s remains through clean, good-to-go – though not brand-new – clothes. Once Granny Noëline had understood that it was over, she had left, leaving Philippe alone to tend to his father’s body. Washing the earthly vessel after the soul had gone to join its Creator was the highest tribute the living could pay to one who had preceded them into the ravines of death.
The dead are more important than death itself.
She was familiar with death, but only the death of her loved ones. She had never learned to think of herself as the custodian of shadows and spirits that were not her own flesh and blood.
***
How can you undertake archaeological excavations when onlookers, clinging to security barriers, distrust you?
‘Quiet days were rare,’ she continued. Not that visitors were aggressive or intrusive. But between the impossibility of holding back the sand and the need to reassure those who insisted on keeping watch over the bodies, the pressure only eased at the end of the day, once the trenches were deserted.
She thought she knew what death was like in La Réunion. But what she didn’t know caught up with her before long.
Two security men had been recruited. They kept watch over the site from late afternoon to the next morning.
She stopped and tried to look at herself from the outside, imagining herself somewhere above, below or to the side, observing herself. She would have liked that sensation of being outside herself, of seeing herself differently. That had to be what fulfillment felt like: stepping out of oneself in order to return more fully. Her gaze moved from the front row to the back of the theater: no one had left. They were waiting for her to speak. If she had listened to her inner voice, she would have walked out the door, followed the dark corridor, gone down a floor and found herself at ground level. There would only have been a few steps left, the glass door, the street – and then she would have been free. It seemed so long. It was tempting.
It was the first time she had testified in public.
‘By June 23, only two of us were left at the site: the head of the excavations and me. We didn’t see him coming. He must have made a sound, because we turned around. We were… we were looking out to sea with our backs to the trenches.’
The site was closed to the public, but the intruder – a Creole man of about forty, or in his early fifties, with bulging eyes and straight jet-black hair – would not take no for an answer.
A woman, two men, a saber and a cloth waited. And bones that had never asked anything of anyone. In the audacious man’s mind, the film had already been shot. A skeleton in the name of all the others. By the force of a supernatural wish, one of the two archaeologists was to take hold of the bones – either all at once or one after another – and slowly lay them on the cloth, which he would then have folded like a mortuary shroud. For him, this was not theft. There was nothing sordid, distressing or tragic about it in his mind.
He wanted to carry the skeleton in a soubique, for a funerary rite. But would he have been able to piece it back together before burying it?
A hand went up.
‘What is a soubique? Could you explain?’
The use of the familiar tu in the French question made Tahina smile. The night before, she had spoken with this colleague, who was from an African university. They had amused themselves by recording their conversation and then listening back to it. He thought her French bore a certain something, despite her use of standard vocabulary. ‘You have an accent,’ he had crooned. She had laughed. No filter could strip her French of its intonation and Creole melody.
She explained the word soubique before returning to the bones.
‘We explained, negotiated. It was out of the question to entrust him with a skeleton that belonged neither to him nor to us. Nor did we want to lose such valuable historical material.’
A flash exploded in her head. The arrival of two neighbors – a young boy who had developed a passion for archaeology, plus his older sister – had caused the intruder to retreat. The following day, a dismembered body was found in the ravine of Saint-Gilles. After the burial, the man’s relatives had come to leave offerings at the exact site of the excavation, once the team had left. They had placed fruit, cassava and rum in a soubique, for the dead whom the crowd had manhandled.
***
Pitch black over Paris. Along the banks of the Seine, where night wanderers disturbed the slumber of darkness, the musée du quai Branly lay asleep, a long footbridge on stilts. The conference had fallen silent; the archaeologists had departed and gone their separate ways. That evening, in a brasserie in the Porte Dorée area, they had gathered cheerfully around a table, at the center of which certain individuals had discreetly placed a small glass of liquor and a bowl of dried fruit.
Published in agreement with Les Éditions du Poisson-Rouge & Nathalie Hermine
[1] Évariste de Parny, born in 1753 in Saint-Paul (La Réunion), died in 1841 in Paris. Author of Chansons Madécasses (Songs of Madagascar) (1787).
[2] Saint-Paul Réunion Seaside Cemetery archaeological survey June 2011 City of Saint-Paul Ministry for Culture and Communication. Dac-OI, DRASSM.
[3] If ants march beneath the ground, people know about it.
[4] It’s hot.
[5] Now that you’ve found our bodies, you can listen to our voices. Remember us, you who tread this shore. Imagine us, armed with a pickaxe and subject to the orders of the bell. The swell has exposed us. You feel our humility, but we merely want to return to the ocean. It is our own way of being human.
[6] This is the day that commemorates the abolition of slavery in La Réunion. It is also known as Fet Kaf.