1.             Tiutiana of Butaritari

Butaritari, Kiribati

Butaritari is best known as one of the islands where Robert Louis Stevenson lived in the late nineteenth century. It is one of the larger atolls in Kiribati. The lagoon is as beautiful as you would imagine a Pacific lagoon to be. It is almost thirty kilometres across. Along the western side, the reef, dotted with small islets, breaks into several broad channels.

Along the northern coastline of the atoll, the reef is continuous. The deep lagoon is accessible by large ships, though the entrance passages are narrow. The main village is Butaritari. When I was there in 1999 with my daughter, Allison, the population was just under 2000, half of the island’s total population. Butaritari is the largest settlement outside of the capital on South Tarawa.

When Allison and I landed on the large ex World War II strip at the so-called international airport, I did a double take. The terminal was a massive tin shed which had originally been set up as a soft drink factory. On Butaritari? Population 2000? Where there is little cash economy? Whose brainwave was that? The World Bank’s? The Asian Development Bank’s? Locals told me the plan was to bottle the drinks and ship them to the Marshall Islands and Hawaii.

‘How many ships per year?’

‘Not many.’

‘How many?’

‘One. Sometimes two.’

‘Where did the bottles come from?’

‘Dunno!’

Stevenson had a wonderful impression of the place. He wrote of the Kiribati dance form called the ruoia that was performed on Butaritari:

‘Of all they call dance in the Pacific, the performance I saw on Butaritari was the best... Gilbertese dance appeals to the soul: it makes one thrill with emotion, it uplifts one, it conquers one: it has the essence of all great art: an immediate and far from exhausted appeal.’

All I saw were villagers dancing to Michael Jackson cassettes. Times change.

Allison and I disembarked from the Chinese made Twin Otter flown by Indonesian pilots who smoked clove cigarettes for the whole journey, including landing. I knew them and liked them. As I speak Indonesian, we became friends and had many pleasant evenings together. I found their airmanship a little disquieting at times.

As we landed on Butaritari, Dadan, the pilot, turned to us and yelled: ‘Let’s see if we can hit those dogs and people on the strip!’

He proceeded to tense up and aim at the animals and pedestrians taking a shortcut across the strip, laughing all the while and yelling out: ‘Duh duh duh duh duh!’ as if he was firing a machine gun at them! We missed the people. And the dogs. Just.

The plane was not in excellent shape. For our return journey we had to wait two days as it had ‘broken down.’ Hendric, the mechanic, also an Indonesian, was unable to get it going for a few days after the rubber band in the engine snapped, or whatever.

Allison and I did not mind. We were having a ball on this delightful island.

We had a booking in a local ‘hotel.’

‘How do we get there?’

A couple of motorbikes dealt with that problem.

‘Our bags?’

‘A car will bring them later.’

‘Which car?’

‘We have three on the island.’

It duly arrived. Of course Tiutiana, the caretaker of the ‘hotel’ knew nothing of our booking. What a surprise. After all, there were no telephones on Butaritari, just a radio operated by the island’s local government.

There were no shops. A few kiosks sometimes opened: truly a pure, almost untouched paradise in every sense of the word.

How did Tiutiana pronounce her name? Susanna of course. Pompous missionaries wrote the language down for them. Their opinion of the Kiribati people’s mental capacity was less than stellar, so rather than 26 letters, they took a few unnecessary ones, like s, out: ‘t’ becomes ‘s.’

Susanna, sorry Tiutiana, looked after us well. She was an amazing cook. She prepared the full range of local dishes: bananas, fish, papaya, coconut and swamp taro. That was it. The full range.

Well, almost. There were eggs and noodles and sometimes bread. Did I forget something? Ah yes: fresh lobster and fish and crab and … shall I continue? The lobsters were a tad expensive. Fifty cents each. Australian cents, that is. Kiribati uses the Australian currency.

Butaritari. After Bhutan it would be my first choice of a place to retire.  Allison and I had a hut right on the lagoon. We were the only guests. A small library provided us with books and a Tilley lamp light up our scrabble board in the evening. Scrabble, chess, cards, pictionary and monopoly — what else could you ask for?

In the daytime we cycled the island. We paid homage to Stevenson’s house — or where it used to be. All that remained were some steps. We kept riding. We were warmed by real hospitality! Children ran to greet us laughing and calling out ‘I-matang, I-matang!’ (Foreigner). If we responded to their greetings they would break into excited chatter and run up to us, forcing us to stop our bikes and join them in their happiness.

The adults were a bit more reserved, but would also grin when we greeted them with ‘Mauri.’ We relaxed on the Red Beach — a delightful alcove on the lagoon to the south of the main village. If you wanted picture perfect, this was it. Allison spent the time in the water, whilst I did an impression of a beached whale by splashing myself. The seawater temperature was so perfect that you were up to your waist before you knew you were wet.

Our joy was sullied when, as we sat drinking a fresh coconut, a large (not unusually) local lady wandered on to the beach. She greeted us cheerfully, lifted her skirt, squatted down a few metres to our left and crapped.

Allison and I gagged. Her toilet over, with a perfunctory application of sand to the area of her body where the emission had emissed, she stood, turned and smiled.

‘Why do not you use a toilet?’ I asked, assuming an angelic tone and smile.

‘We do not need toilets,’ she said, looking puzzled. ‘We have the beach.’

Silly me! She hitched up her dress and wandered off. The tide would soon take out the turds. Did I forget to mention that there were no toilets in villages? It spoiled things a little.

That evening we played Scrabble and Allison won. Shock! Horror! She beat me! For most of the night we tried to count the billion stars in the clear sky. We felt even more isolated when we saw the lights of a plane thousands of metres up, probably on route from Hawaii to Australia.

When my Indonesian mates managed to fly their bucket of bolts back to collect us we were both a little sad to leave. Rarely had we met such hospitality and genuine joy. We learned a lesson in living with nothing whilst you have almost everything.

Would that it could last!

I was returning to Dili, against the wishes of the company and the Australian Government. Timor had voted in its referendum. My friends in Timor were suffering.

I asked permission to go. It was refused. So I went.