Fakaofo

Archaeological evidence puts the settlement of the Tokelau atolls at about a thousand years ago, from Samoa, and Fakaofo became the ceremonial centre of the group. Worship centred on Tui Tokelau, a god personified by a monumental coral slab kept under mats in a house at the village marae; each May the people of all three atolls gathered there to feast and to pray for protection. The slab still stands in the village.

Two nineteenth-century events reshaped the atoll. In 1863 Peruvian slave traders took away nearly all the able-bodied men of the group, 253 of them, leaving the atolls depopulated; Polynesian settlers and beachcombers who married local women repopulated them. Missionaries preached in Tokelau between 1845 and the 1870s: Atafu went to the London Missionary Society and Nukunonu to the Catholics, while Fakaofo took both, and at the last count about seventy per cent of its people were Congregational and twenty-two per cent Catholic.

Tokelau was declared a British protectorate in 1889 and annexed to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony in 1916; New Zealand took over the administration in 1926, and the Tokelau Islands Act 1948 brought the atolls formally within New Zealand, Tokelauans becoming New Zealand citizens in 1949. A 1980 treaty with the United States, in force from 1983, settled competing claims and drew the maritime boundary with American Samoa. The village of Fale grew so crowded that from 1960 families were resettled on the larger islet of Fenua Fala, where most of the atoll's people now live. Tokelau shifted to the western side of the international date line at the end of 2011, and in 2012 it became the first country to run its electricity on solar power.

Fakaofo is governed by its Taupulega, the council of elders drawn from the extended families, which decides matters of land, fishing, work and behaviour; the head of the Tokelau government, the Ulu-o-Tokelau, rotates each year among the three atolls' faipule, and each atoll sends members to the General Fono. Work is organised communally, and the catch and much of the produce are shared out household by household so that no family goes without.

Church life sets the rhythm of the week, and the Congregational tradition brought by Samoan missionaries is the dominant one here. Sunday is quiet, services are long and full, and White Sunday in October belongs to the children. The meeting house is the other centre of village life, where the council sits and where the fatele is performed: a fast, percussive song and dance, sung in competition between sides of the village, with drumming on a wooden box.

Tokelauan, the first language of almost everyone on the atoll, carries its identity, along with canoe building, weaving of pandanus mats and baskets, and the knowledge of reef, tide and star that fishing depends on. More than seven thousand people identified as Tokelauan in New Zealand at the 2013 census, close to five times the number living in Tokelau, and they keep close ties, sending support home and returning for family occasions.

About 500 people live on Fakaofo, 483 at the last census, in two settlements: the old village on the tiny islet of Fale, where houses stand wall to wall, and the newer, roomier village on Fenua Fala across the lagoon, which has held most of the atoll's people since 1960. Boats cross between them through the day, and the rest of the atoll's islets are worked rather than lived on.

Paid work means the public service — the council office, the school, the clinic, the store, the power and water systems — because there is almost no private economy. Households fish the lagoon and the open sea, tend coconut and pulaka pits, and rely on money sent by relatives abroad; copra, handicrafts, stamps and the territory's .tk internet domain make up most of the rest of the income, the domain alone accounting for about a sixth of the economy by 2012. Solar panels supply the electricity.

The day begins early and quietly: fishing at first light, work parties called by the council, school, and family meals, with the evening given to church, cards, cricket on the open ground. Everything else waits for the ship, which brings fuel, flour, mail, visitors and departing patients every couple of weeks. The overriding concern is the sea: at only a few metres above it, the atoll takes the full force of king tides and storm surges, and land is lost and rebuilt along the shore.

Fish is the foundation of the diet — tuna, bonito, reef fish, octopus and shellfish, caught from small boats or off the reef and shared through the inati. Coconut appears in every form, from drinking nuts to cream pressed for cooking and oil, and the hard flesh of older nuts feeds pigs and chickens. Pulaka, the swamp taro grown in dug pits of composted soil, and breadfruit are the traditional starches, with pandanus fruit and papaya adding variety.

Most dishes are simple: fish grilled over coals or baked in leaves, simmered in coconut cream, or dried and salted for later; breadfruit roasted whole; taro boiled and served with coconut. Pork and chicken are feast food, killed for church occasions, weddings, funerals and Christmas, when an oven of hot stones is built and the village eats together in the meeting house.

Imported food now makes up a large part of what is eaten. Rice, flour, sugar, tea, tinned fish and corned beef come in on the supply ship and are sold at the village store, and bread is baked at home from imported flour. Drink means green coconut, rainwater, tea and cocoa.