An introduction to Kiribati
At a total area of 3.5 million square kilometres, about the size of India, Kiribati is probably the largest country that you've never heard of. It is literally the middle of the Pacific, a huge swath of the central equatorial ocean stretching from the Gilbert Islands, north of Fiji, to the Line Islands, like Kiritimati, south of Hawaii. The 33 atolls of Kiribati comprise only 811 km2 of land, about the size of my sprawling hometown of Toronto.The name Kiribati, pronounced Kee-ree-bas, is actually based on the pronounciation of Gilberts in the local language. Have a couple kaokioki (sour toddies, made from fermented sap from coconut trees) to loosen up your English language jaw, and you'll get it.
The capital atoll of Tarawa in the Gilberts, home to the government and half of the people, is typical of the geography. It is an extremely flat (max elevation 4 m) and surprisingly long (~120 km) chain of narrow islands. Thanks to the long, narrow geography of the atolls, it is often possible to stand along the placid lagoon and listen to the rumble of breaking waves over reef behind you.
There is virtually nothing in the way of visitor infrastructure in Tarawa, or any of the Gilbert chain, save for the Japanese-built hotel frequented by the usual stream of consultants from international organizations like the IMF and World Bank circulating around the Pacific. There is no need for tourist infrastructure, though. Tarawa only received 219 tourists last year.
My experiences in Kiribati will be documented, eventually, in a longer essay about the vulnerability of this small island nation to the climate (and the outside world!). I spent much of the three weeks there chatting with people about the impacts of climate on the atolls and surveying the aftermath of a coral bleaching event, with help from my friend Taratau Kirata at the Fisheries Department. The journey led me to spend two nights in an open-air bwai, be blessed by a local elder, share corned beef out a tin while riding in an ill-equipped boat in the open Pacific, appear on the radio station to talk about climate change (!) and witness the largest storm in three decades.
It was a fascinating, bewildering and frustrating experience that will take months, maybe years, to fully process. For now, I have posted a collection of brief stories and observations about the trip, in more or less chronological order.