One of several “perfect” Chagosian yoga studios.
"Did you even watch that documentary about Chagos that I sent you?”
“Sorry, no.” I say, while Andrew scuttles away to avoid the question.
Pete groans, releasing the depth of his disappointment like a belch from a sulfuric volcano.
“I can't think about that business, Pete. I'm on a yoga retreat."
“Well, if you had watched the documentary….” Pete carries on with his dissertation of all the things I really should be thinking about while I’m here, but I am not.
“I meant to watch it, I really did.”
“WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY!”
By the time we arrived in Chagos, I was fully ready to escape my near continuous consumption of news and debates over everything from global disease, economic ruin, murders, riots, murders at riots, hatred toward our fellow man, and all the ways this fair planet of mine is burning in a poisonous gas of our species making. While we spent months isolated to our anchorage in the Maldives, we had the luck of fairly well-functioning internet. YouTube, News, and Social Media were a mere thumb-flick away. But, as with all lucky-breaks, this one carried side effects and unintended consequences - specifically, the weight that comes from knowing too much and doing too little about it.
As we sailed away from that 3G tower, I looked forward with relish to a time I could press pause on the world and its troubles. What a gift this time could be! I decided before we ever left that (1) I would enjoy the freedom from internet; and (2) I would fill the extra time with all those things I say I "would do” if I just had the time: reading more books, writing more stories, doing yoga, and meditating.
And so, one of the very first orders of business upon our arrival was to hunt down the perfect “yoga studio”.
“What makes a great yoga studio?" Jen asks.
“Flat, hard packed sand, shade, a gorgeous view, and quiet enough that we can hear the ‘yoga lady’ guide us through the process over my little portable speaker.”
“We have a yoga lady?"
“Well...she’s me. But I've voice recorded the series of yoga positions so that I don’t have to use any sort of mental discipline to get through a workout, my bossy alter ego can tell me what to do instead."
Day 1: our yoga blankets flutter as we wave our arms high, then low to spread our yoga blankets on a space in the sand, around which the “Hermit Crab Highway” snakes and winds like the LA 405. This particular yoga studio holds us in the inner curve of Il Fouquette. The wind is unseasonably blowing from the Northwest, and so this side protects us in the calm of wind and the music of gently lapping water.
The view from our 1st Yoga Studio.
We lay on our backs, close our eyes, and the “Yoga Lady” tells us to observe any areas of tension in our bodies, acknowledge whatever is there for us today, and let it be. This is Jen’s first attempt at yoga ever. She is a brilliant woman of science and logic mind. We've had many conversations over wine or a cup of tea extolling the virtues of the scientific method and bemoaning flim-flam-woowoo. But, I am a deep believer that many of yoga’s breathing, exercise, and meditation techniques have been proven beneficial by science or will be someday soon, and so it escapes the category of flim-flam-woowoo. I feel the weight of responsibility to introduce her to yoga in a way that (a) does not cause her right leg to fall off tonight in her sleep; and (b) might allow her to fall in love with the practice the way I have. As I lay on my back entering that soft dark space behind my eyelids, I wish I had surreptitiously recorded Salem (my perfect Langkawi yoga teacher) guiding any one of her excellent classes. Without internet to stream yoga videos, I’m left to my own devices.
“Yoga speaks for itself.”
Where does insight come from? Is it from yourself? Your own brain? Your gut? Your heart? Surely there are as many theories about “who" to trust inside your own psyche as there are noisemakers to send you noise. But sometimes, a piece of insight floats in and settles upon you with a certainty that can only be described as “knowledge”. And in this moment, I know this with certainty. Yoga speaks for itself. If you practice it, experience it, approach it gently while letting go of your worldly expectations of how "bendy or strong" you should be, yoga will reveal itself. Yoga does not care who you are or what physical state you are in when you arrive on the mat.
“Mmm...true!" I think.
The recordings of Leslie-The-Standin-Yoga-Lady are nothing more than Salem's yoga series as best as I can remember them, and mostly only the easy and safe stuff. I have a yoga text book from way back in my college days that I would refer to, to remember exactly what the names of the positions are, how they should be aligned, and whether they will cause your eyeballs to pop out if you have a pre-existing glaucoma. I put them in the order I know Salem puts them in, because I know she puts them in that order for specific reasons. As I proceed through this hour and a half class, I inhale to expand my muscles, joints, organs and the space between. As I exhale and relax back, both my body and my spirit become more fluid, able to move bone against tendon, lungs against rib cage; each one scoch easier than before. I allow the sludge of cortisol and bad news that binds my cells together to dislodge from its holding-web and melt away from me. At the end of the class, I lay in “dead body” pose to become nothing but a puddle of flesh and quieted brain matter until....
“Nibby, nibby, nibby....”
I wiggle the toe being nibbled on, and try to ignore the intrusion.
“Nibby, nibby, nibby...”
Whatever it is has a hold of my pinky toe, and he's trying to carry me away. I'm much to heavy, and so instead, fall from his grasp before he can get anywhere.
“Nibby, nibby, nibby...."
“HEY!" Jen exclaims and sits up, “HEY!" She says again as she finds a large green crab scuttling across her legs. I sit up and make eye contact with my own crab, still pinching the skin of my pinky toe in his pincer. He drops my toe and hoists a small white shell in his hands, as if to say “wasn't me! I was over here holding this shell the whole time!”
What toe? I don’t like toes. I’ve been carrying this shell the whole time, see?
This, makes me laugh. And we close up our yoga session feeling clean, refreshed, and cheerful about our new crabby friends.
I keep my yoga schedule: 3 sessions per week for the 3 weeks we are there. And with each session, I feel more and more free. Meanwhile, I bring this new cheer along on all our Chagosian adventures. We decide it’s time to hunt down our favorite coiffing venue: Best Sand Bar of 2020. This location is in the running, but Grin votes against it, because he says it has uncomfortable parking spaces and poor barstools.
Further to that, we were somewhat concerned this guy might fly in to start a bar fight.
We go line fishing from our dinghies (which Grin is very pleased with), and Andrew catches three! Pete and Jen, unfortunately, are still studying up, with Mark and Susan getting a nibble, but no catch. Fish - 1; Erie Spirit - 0.
The three boat fellows watched over us as sunset dropped and the clouds glowed pink and golden over our fishing grounds.
We search out the endangered and protected giant coconut crabs that wander around wearing the coconut shells from which they love to snack. Each time trying to find one bigger than the next.
We hang hammocks on the beach and have a great belly laugh over both Jen's fashionable sea boots worn to protect a blister on her toe from further infectious intrusion of sand and our differing philosophies on structural integrity of hammocks.
“I would never sit in that thing!" Pete exclaims about the red hammock containing a tangle of both human Oddgodfrey crew members.
"What? Why not?” I ask, then note the Steel Sapphire strategy. While the Oddgodfreys are hanging from a hammock built of lightweight parachute fabric and light diameter rope - perfect for carrying this thing anywhere you wish to go, Peter and Jen are drooping each from their own cotton/canvas woven hammocks strung up to palm trees with extra halyards fit for their 50 foot, 30 ton steel ketch. We laugh and laugh until the sun starts to go down and we are required to evacuate the beach for our sunset “curfew”.
In this moment I am keenly aware of how lucky I am to experience this escape from reality. I’m in a tropical isolation chamber, in the midst of one of the more stressful points in history for the entire world. I am on pause, inside of a dream. And yet...
“Oh, take a look at this!” Pete says, “I think it was quite an advanced society.”
We are wandering around Boddem, one of the several islands that circle the atoll and the only island that housed human civilization in years prior. We have poked our noses in old homes, a church, a warehouse. We’ve walked through long overgrown coconut plantation, and surveyed water wells inhabited by giant spiders, silted, and contaminated by salt water. Now, Pete has found rail tracks and rail cart wheels used to transport coconut copra from the processing warehouse to the docks where ships would arrive to pick it up and transport it for use elsewhere.
The abandoned cemetery offers up the mood of human ancestors haunted by loneliness and yet, peaceful in the quiet of nature, their children and grandchildren all long departed from where these ghosts now rest.
(Mary in the Cemetery, Photo by Jennifer Bernard. My camera battery died!)
“If you would have just watched the documentary I sent you...” Pete nags, because he enjoys the process of nagging.
This place hasn’t always been uninhabited. During the cold war, allied forces were looking for a place in the remote Indian Ocean to build a military base. The United Kingdom had possession of a number of these islands, they targeted the area where Diego Garcia now rests as their planned base. The Chagosian people had been living here, producing, and exporting copra. The United Kingdom employed them to assist in building the base, and when it was accomplished, moved them to a different group of islands a few thousand miles away so that this area could be completely secure for military use. Now, the United Kingdom leases the ground where the base operates to the United States.
Over the years, the threat of the cold war seemed to diminish but the use of the military base did not. It continues to operate today. And, for years, some of the people have been fighting to recover their lost land, return, and resettle. At least twice, courts for the United Nations determined the UK should, indeed, work on resettlement. However, as the United Kingdom analyzes the situation, they can’t imagine how to responsibly resettle these later generations of Chagossian people in raw nature left fallow for all these years. We might all be able to agree taking the land from them in the 50s was wrong, but none of the people who made those decisions are here today to either punish or from whom we could demand a solution. (is this starting to sound familiar?)
The people in whose hands this responsibility rests now have to analyze how could this be done? Would it be responsible to simply open the doors without attempting to build infrastructure, provide health care, education, and opportunities for employment? What would be the cost and distraction of building all those things in this far flung, remote place? And how many Chagosians actually wish to return? Most alive today have never lived in this place at all, and are currently making their lives in the islands of Mauritius or the Seychelles. Further to that, the area is now operating as an environmental preserve with the hope that the sharks and ocean species we’ve over-fished, poisoned with plastics, and choked with floating garbage will find this one of the last safe harbors in the world for nursing new schools of offspring.
Indeed, sailors used to be able to sail through freely, anchor up and spend the whole sailing season in this gorgeous place while drinking at a make shift “yacht club.” But, after everyone realized all humans have a tendency to just toss their detritus around, including sailors, they closed the door and made Chagos a stop allowed only by permit limited by time and a number of strict rules.
Who is Maurice!?
And then I suppose there is the question of how the balance of world powers shifts if use of a military base like Diego Garcia changes. Maybe the answer is none at all? Maybe it would be significant. This issue involves complexity far beyond anything I can absorb while trying to ignore the realities of Covid at my “Chagosian Yoga Retreat.”
As we stand before the monument installed by Chagosians who were allowed to visit a few years ago, I ponder several questions: What am I responsible to do with all these complexities across the world, so many of which are not my battle to fight. Which ones are my battles to fight? And when a battle is not mine, am I responsible to absorb the negative realities resulting from the unfairness of this world? Should I make sure I’m “just a little bit miserable” while I hang out here and enjoy the tranquility of a human uninhabited world from the comfort of my sailboat? Would that be enough anyway? Am I responsible to “stay informed” if being informed interrupts my ability to find peace in this life? Is real peace possible or fair in our lives while others struggle? Alternatively, are we squandering a good opportunity for peace in our lives if we do not release the struggles that are not ours to fight?
I have zero answers to these or a million other questions in life. And frankly, I don’t expect to find those answers anytime soon.
“Pete. Hush up.” I tell him, with good nature but feeling entirely serious. I need a break from pondering the struggles of life, and I’m taking it - whether I deserve one or not. Back at the “yoga studio”, I’m off-gassing this discomfort and waiting for my self to glow a bit more peacefully once more when another one of those pieces of “Knowledge” settles in:
“Life is more rich around friends who make you think.”
Fine, Pete. Fine. Maybe later I will watch the documentary.