Sun, sand and rather a lot of sea
“We should be landing on schedule if air traffic control in Tarawa clears us for landing,” says the voice from the jet’s flight deck. I peer out the window. The skies are crystal clear and the slender blue-green slivers of land that make up the atolls of Tarawa come into view – and moments later, so does Bonriki Airport’s long strip of tarmac lying transverse to make the most of the broadest part of the land mass –yet it stretches all the way across the land with the tides nibbling at both its ends.
In such perfect visual conditions and in a place where I know only a couple of jet flights land and take off in a whole week, I begin to wonder what the pilot meant when he said, “if air traffic control in Tarawa clears us for landing.” My question remains unanswered over the next day or so –more on this in a moment.
On the ground the immigration officer asks me why I’m there. “I’m a journalist,” I say. She responds with raised eyebrows. “I’m a writer.” Same response. “I’m here to write features on climate change.” Her eyebrows are still raised. “Sea level rise.” I think the penny drops. “Sea level rise,” she scribbles on the form and motions me to the baggage reclaim area, which I notice, has no conveyor belt system.
A whole lot of passengers find out that their baggage wasn’t loaded on the flight in Nadi, Fiji. There’s a small contingent from the south pacific Commission, Suva. They’re here on a mission and none of their paper work or their personal effects has arrived. It’d be too late to get it on the next flight because that’s day they’ll be departing on. I shudder at their plight.
No cabbie barometer
There’s nothing better than a taxi ride and a chat with a cabbie anywhere in the world – however opinionated and in whatever flavour of English it may be – to give you insights into the lay of the land and recent goings on when you’ve just arrived in a new city, especially for the first time. In Tarawa, though, there’s neither cab nor cabbie. There are mini buses –plenty of them. But you can converse neither with the driver nor with anyone else even if they could speak English. The music is turned on so high I want to get off at the next stop.
So I plan to do the next best thing: chat up locals preferably at a watering hole over a few sundowners. There’s a few in Betio, I’m told. I drive southward across the long, desolate causeway past the huge rusty WW-II guns pointing pointlessly at the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, sentinels of an era whose memory is fading away like the light of the setting sun. As the sky turns inky, I hop around the traps, all of which seem much too deserted for a Friday night. “Because it’s not pay week,” the barman says.
A portly man smilingly introduces himself as a businessman and an ex-bureaucrat. When I tell him of my mission, he matter-of-factly tells me he’ll only talk if I promise not to quote him. He seems articulate and I can see his guard is down with just the right amount of beer or whatever it is that he’s been drinking that makes guys speak their mind, even if a little colourfully.
He’s the kind of guy I want to chat up with –and well before he approaches inebriation, which I suspect will come sooner rather than later if I stay long enough.
So, does he think his country is sinking? He offers me a choice. Do I want to hear what I want to hear –or do I want to hear what he really thinks? I choose the latter.
“It’s always been like this, ever since I was a kid,” he says without a moment’s hesitation. “Maybe there’s the odd king tide that’s unusually nasty but nothing that’ll make us sink.” He is categorical: he simply does not believe the atolls will sink any time soon.
And what’s his other take? “If you want to hear what everyone wants to hear: help us, help us please, we’re sinking –give us the money, give us the cash!” he shouts laughing and gesturing as if he’s being swept away by swirling, rising waters.
Speed bumps and a racetrack
The beliefs of the man in the bar notwithstanding, signs of climate change and its far more pronounced effect on humans are everywhere on Tarawa. You see sea walls reduced to rubble. Overcrowding. Litter. Food and freshwater scarcity –all hit you hard just like the unmarked speed bumps on Tarawa’s only road thump the base of your spine and the top of your head in rapid succession as you drive around.
The smiling, friendly young man who is my driver and tour guide and also the receptionist and the internet café operator back at the motel tells me he’s also a tertiary student who works 14 hour shifts, six days a week at A$1.20 an hour.
He decides to step on the gas on the stretches of causeway that have no speed bumps. A couple of Tarawa’s policemen stop us for over-speeding. After a brief exchange mostly of smiles and what seems like friendly banter, we’re let off. He tells me they gave him a stern warning and asked him his name and address.
“I didn’t give my real name,” he says guffawing with unconcealed glee. “They’ll never know.” On a narrow strip of land with just the one road and only so many people, I can only wonder how.
He promises to take me to a racetrack for the thrill of my life and as we drive, offers to sing Hindi songs from Bollywood films when he learns I’m from India. His words don’t mean a thing. But he’s tuneful and I can tell which songs he’s singing, as I capture his full-throated, unselfconscious performance on video. I’m impressed at Bollywood’s reach even in a place as far removed from India as Tarawa –and one that has no movie theatre worth its name.
The racetrack? It’s the unfenced runway of Bonriki airport. We speed up and down racing with other cars and two wheelers on the potholed tarmac, which is also the only one I have seen with graffiti on it.
Men have drawn bold hearts and arrows between their and their lady loves’ names (I say men because I don’t think women are ever into graffiti anywhere in the world) right in the middle of the runway that has none of those broad white lines that most runways have.
I now realise the pilot’s nagging doubt about being cleared to land by Tarawa’s air traffic control, which, before allowing any plane to land, must first deal with all that ground traffic on the runway.
“We should be landing on schedule if air traffic control in Tarawa clears us for landing,” says the voice from the jet’s flight deck. I peer out the window. The skies are crystal clear and the slender blue-green slivers of land that make up the atolls of Tarawa come into view – and moments later,...
“We should be landing on schedule if air traffic control in Tarawa clears us for landing,” says the voice from the jet’s flight deck. I peer out the window. The skies are crystal clear and the slender blue-green slivers of land that make up the atolls of Tarawa come into view – and moments later, so does Bonriki Airport’s long strip of tarmac lying transverse to make the most of the broadest part of the land mass –yet it stretches all the way across the land with the tides nibbling at both its ends.
In such perfect visual conditions and in a place where I know only a couple of jet flights land and take off in a whole week, I begin to wonder what the pilot meant when he said, “if air traffic control in Tarawa clears us for landing.” My question remains unanswered over the next day or so –more on this in a moment.
On the ground the immigration officer asks me why I’m there. “I’m a journalist,” I say. She responds with raised eyebrows. “I’m a writer.” Same response. “I’m here to write features on climate change.” Her eyebrows are still raised. “Sea level rise.” I think the penny drops. “Sea level rise,” she scribbles on the form and motions me to the baggage reclaim area, which I notice, has no conveyor belt system.
A whole lot of passengers find out that their baggage wasn’t loaded on the flight in Nadi, Fiji. There’s a small contingent from the south pacific Commission, Suva. They’re here on a mission and none of their paper work or their personal effects has arrived. It’d be too late to get it on the next flight because that’s day they’ll be departing on. I shudder at their plight.
No cabbie barometer
There’s nothing better than a taxi ride and a chat with a cabbie anywhere in the world – however opinionated and in whatever flavour of English it may be – to give you insights into the lay of the land and recent goings on when you’ve just arrived in a new city, especially for the first time. In Tarawa, though, there’s neither cab nor cabbie. There are mini buses –plenty of them. But you can converse neither with the driver nor with anyone else even if they could speak English. The music is turned on so high I want to get off at the next stop.
So I plan to do the next best thing: chat up locals preferably at a watering hole over a few sundowners. There’s a few in Betio, I’m told. I drive southward across the long, desolate causeway past the huge rusty WW-II guns pointing pointlessly at the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, sentinels of an era whose memory is fading away like the light of the setting sun. As the sky turns inky, I hop around the traps, all of which seem much too deserted for a Friday night. “Because it’s not pay week,” the barman says.
A portly man smilingly introduces himself as a businessman and an ex-bureaucrat. When I tell him of my mission, he matter-of-factly tells me he’ll only talk if I promise not to quote him. He seems articulate and I can see his guard is down with just the right amount of beer or whatever it is that he’s been drinking that makes guys speak their mind, even if a little colourfully.
He’s the kind of guy I want to chat up with –and well before he approaches inebriation, which I suspect will come sooner rather than later if I stay long enough.
So, does he think his country is sinking? He offers me a choice. Do I want to hear what I want to hear –or do I want to hear what he really thinks? I choose the latter.
“It’s always been like this, ever since I was a kid,” he says without a moment’s hesitation. “Maybe there’s the odd king tide that’s unusually nasty but nothing that’ll make us sink.” He is categorical: he simply does not believe the atolls will sink any time soon.
And what’s his other take? “If you want to hear what everyone wants to hear: help us, help us please, we’re sinking –give us the money, give us the cash!” he shouts laughing and gesturing as if he’s being swept away by swirling, rising waters.
Speed bumps and a racetrack
The beliefs of the man in the bar notwithstanding, signs of climate change and its far more pronounced effect on humans are everywhere on Tarawa. You see sea walls reduced to rubble. Overcrowding. Litter. Food and freshwater scarcity –all hit you hard just like the unmarked speed bumps on Tarawa’s only road thump the base of your spine and the top of your head in rapid succession as you drive around.
The smiling, friendly young man who is my driver and tour guide and also the receptionist and the internet café operator back at the motel tells me he’s also a tertiary student who works 14 hour shifts, six days a week at A$1.20 an hour.
He decides to step on the gas on the stretches of causeway that have no speed bumps. A couple of Tarawa’s policemen stop us for over-speeding. After a brief exchange mostly of smiles and what seems like friendly banter, we’re let off. He tells me they gave him a stern warning and asked him his name and address.
“I didn’t give my real name,” he says guffawing with unconcealed glee. “They’ll never know.” On a narrow strip of land with just the one road and only so many people, I can only wonder how.
He promises to take me to a racetrack for the thrill of my life and as we drive, offers to sing Hindi songs from Bollywood films when he learns I’m from India. His words don’t mean a thing. But he’s tuneful and I can tell which songs he’s singing, as I capture his full-throated, unselfconscious performance on video. I’m impressed at Bollywood’s reach even in a place as far removed from India as Tarawa –and one that has no movie theatre worth its name.
The racetrack? It’s the unfenced runway of Bonriki airport. We speed up and down racing with other cars and two wheelers on the potholed tarmac, which is also the only one I have seen with graffiti on it.
Men have drawn bold hearts and arrows between their and their lady loves’ names (I say men because I don’t think women are ever into graffiti anywhere in the world) right in the middle of the runway that has none of those broad white lines that most runways have.
I now realise the pilot’s nagging doubt about being cleared to land by Tarawa’s air traffic control, which, before allowing any plane to land, must first deal with all that ground traffic on the runway.
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