Tarawa

Tarawa was settled by Micronesian voyagers long before written records, and Gilbertese tradition links the atoll to Samoan arrivals who reshaped its clans and the seating order of its maneaba. Its islets were a cluster of village districts living on fish, coconut, pandanus and swamp taro, with the great meeting houses as their parliaments. Whalers and traders appeared in the nineteenth century, missionaries followed, and in 1892 the Gilbert Islands became a British protectorate, administered for decades from the phosphate island of Banaba rather than from here.

The atoll's name became widely known in November 1943. Japanese forces had fortified Betio, the small western islet, with bunkers, coastal guns and an airfield, and a United States amphibious assault took it in about three days of fighting on ground barely a few kilometres long. More than a thousand American servicemen were killed, along with almost the entire garrison of roughly four and a half thousand Japanese troops and Korean labourers. The relics of those days still lie along the Betio shore.

After the war the colonial headquarters moved to Tarawa, and Bairiki became the seat of government of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony and then, from independence in 1979, of Kiribati. People moved in from the outer islands for schools, hospitals and wage work, causeways built with Japanese aid from the 1980s tied the southern islets into a single strip, and the population multiplied. South Tarawa has since become one of the most densely populated places in the Pacific, and coastal erosion, seawalls and freshwater supply dominate local politics.

The maneaba still governs social life. Each village has its open-sided meeting house with a high thatched or iron roof, where matters are talked through until consensus is reached and where families hold inherited sitting places, or boti, by clan. Elders speak first, and courtesy towards them is the first rule a visitor notices. Even in the crowded townships, a new arrival is placed socially by island of origin and clan.

Dance is the art form I-Kiribati are proudest of. Te mwaie covers a range of forms, from the standing dance with sharp, birdlike movements of the head and arms to the seated chants that drive it, performed to clapping and to a wooden box beaten as a drum. Groups rehearse for months for Independence Day competitions, and the costumes of pandanus fibre, shells and coconut are made by hand. Church choirs are the other great collective music, and Catholic and Protestant congregations compete keenly.

Fishing and the sea remain the measure of skill: canoe building, reading swells and stars, tapping coconut palms for sweet or fermented toddy. Many families have a father or son working on foreign ships, and their remittances and absences shape household life. Football, volleyball and athletics fill the evenings at the Bairiki national stadium, and cinema and karaoke bars provide the rest of the atoll's night-time entertainment.

More than 70,000 people live on South Tarawa, more than half the country's population, on a strip of coral sand rarely more than a few hundred metres wide. Housing is a mix of concrete block and timber-and-thatch, packed tightly on Betio and Bairiki and thinning eastwards. Water comes from rainwater tanks and from wells drawing on the thin freshwater lens under Bonriki and Buota, and both sources are under strain; power cuts, crowded households and stretched sanitation are daily realities.

Work is government, the port, shops and schools, supplemented by fishing and by the wages of seafarers abroad. The national budget leans on licence fees from foreign tuna fleets, on a trust fund built from old phosphate royalties and on aid, and public employment is the largest formal employer. Unemployment among young people is high, and many wait for a place on a ship or a chance to study overseas.

Days start at dawn, with minibuses filling the road, market stalls opening and children walking to school in uniform; the middle of the day is hot and slow; the cool of the late afternoon brings volleyball, fishing from the reef and groups sitting out under the palms. Sunday belongs to church. The long-term worry is unavoidable here: king tides that wash across the road, saltwater in the taro pits, seawalls under constant repair, and a national conversation about how long the atoll can carry so many people.

Tarawa eats from the reef, the lagoon and the coconut. Fish is the constant — tuna, bonefish, mullet, octopus and shellfish — grilled over coconut husks, simmered in coconut cream, dried in the sun, or served raw in lime juice with grated coconut. Te bwabwai, the giant swamp taro grown slowly in dug pits and fed with mulch for years, is the prestige food, brought out for feasts and church occasions rather than eaten every day.

Coconut runs through everything. Te karewe, the sweet sap tapped from the flowering spathe of the palm, is drunk fresh in the morning, boiled down into te kamaimai syrup that is poured over almost anything, or left to ferment into a strong drink whose consumption is a recurring social problem. Pandanus is worked hard too, chewed fresh from the key, or cooked and dried into te tuae cake and ground into te kabubu flour, mixed into a dark, nutty drink. Breadfruit and papaya fill the gaps.

Imported staples now dominate the shops: white rice, flour, sugar, instant noodles, tinned corned beef and fish, and sweet drinks, all of which have driven very high rates of diabetes. Betio's market is the place to see the fresh side of the diet, with the morning catch laid out beside coconuts and bundles of pandanus, while the townships' small restaurants serve rice plates, fried chicken and Chinese dishes to office workers.