A few reflections on my experiences out here in Kiribati. A is for aid : International aid and development assistance plays an important part of the economy out here, as it does in many Pacific Island countries. As with all such help there are good and not so good examples of its effectiveness. Aid can be a bit of a double edged sword in that if isn’t done to build capacity (good old development double speak eh) and in appropriate ways that meets the needs and requests of the locals, and yes are even driven by them by their wants and needs, then it runs the risk of being ineffectual at best or even a total waste of time, money and resources. There are lots of NGOs, organisations, companies and individuals doing great work out here to try and assist the i-Kiribati people to be able to improve their standard of living and quality of life but such assistance needs to be done appropriately and with the support of the people, walking with them to build their skills not in fr...

Last weekend I headed up to   Butaritari with the other kiwi volunteers- Cath, John & Frances. Unfortunately Roi, our Univol (university volunteer) had been flown to Fiji to see a specialist due to some health conditions that weren't responding to treatment and though was hoping to be back in time had not returned so missed out on the trip. Butaritari is another atoll, much like Tarawa and lies about ½ an hour flying time north of here. There are three flights a week: Sun, Tues, Friday so we booked the 9am Friday flight.  The flight was uneventful but the landing a little bumpy Only when we got off the plane onto the coral airstrip did I realise why. We collected our stuff from the plane- which was left by the plane’s cargo door for us. At the side of the runway was a decrepit old building that served as the domestic terminal and it was here that most locals waited for their relatives to get their gear, out of the heat of the sun. While at the far end of the ru...

The Betio Fishing club hold a monthly fishing competition that has been running since 1979. Five or six boats head out early in the morning, fish all day and must be back for the official weigh in at 5pm at the Betio Lodge on Betio. This month I was invited to join the New Zealand boat along with our new VSA Kiribati and Tuvalu programme manager, Trevor. Trevor and I go back a few years. We first worked together at Aoraki polytech in Timaru in 2011 and though he moved onto Corrections and a couple of years ago up to Auckland we played each other at football regularly over the years in the local Timaru competition. So I was pleasantly surprised to see he had become our new programme manager- small world eh. Trevor arrived a couple of weeks back, while I was home on holiday, and is settling in to life out here in the middle of the Pacific. It was an early start on Saturday morning (3am alarm). I biked down to the NZ High Comm arriving at just before 4am and after having been cha...