U is for unforgettable! Kiribati is a country that few people back home I spoke to before I came out here had heard of it.    It is well and truly off the beaten track and down a dead end cul-de-sac as far as being on a major route for international travel destinations go but it is a truly remarkable place and well worth a visit if you ever get the chance- just get off South Tarawa! I’ve had so many experiences over the year but here are a few things that I will cherish and remember fondly when I look back on my time here: The waters of Tarawa lagoon are an impossible shade of turquoise. North Tarawa and the outer islands are simply stunning. The beaches of North Tarawa and the outer islands are picture postcards. They are beautiful, unspoiled jewels and lack the resorts, crowds or other downsides of modern mass tourism. That being said accommodation on North Tarawa and the outer islands can be a tad  basic but is more than adequate- and you will be contrib...

N is for- North Tarawa North Tarawa consists of a string of islets stretching along the norther edge of the lagoon from Buota in the south to Buariki in the north. At high tide you can take a ferry across the channel between North and South Tarawa for 50c but when the tide is low you can simply wade across the 500m gap that separates the two. The coconut covered islets are separated in places by wide channels that can be crossed at low tide and a track winds its way through the villages to Naa at the northern tip of the lagoon.   North Tarawa is like a different world to the heavily populated South and I’m sure is more like South Tarawa would have been before the population got so large. The population of North Tarawa (2015 census) is about 6500 and so is much less densely populated to the South which is home to more than   56,000 people. We often walk from Tebon te Keke to Broken Bridge for a swim, a walk of about an hour each way. The track winds past villages an...

I wrote the following post back in early March and never posted it as I was coming to terms with living out here. It got lost in the events of my mother’s death and I’ve just rediscovered it so thought I’d post if for you, my musings on how our world view is influenced by geography and our experiences growing up. World view  How is your outlook on life, and view of the world, formed? It comes from a large range of factors including: where you grew up (place), socio-economic status (class), family type, family beliefs and traditions, your age, gender, sexual orientation, income, education, life experiences, occupation, culture, language etc. It is in effect the lense through which you see, filter and interpret the world around you. That lense begins to develop as an infant and all your experiences and interactions impact upon it and are distilled by it. In short your experiences, culture and background affect how you view the world round you. World view is usefu...

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...

Another couple of weeks down. Not much to report really. I’ve been biking to work most days but alas the coral dust, mud etc is destroying the gears on my bike so think I will cut back to a couple of days per week. The coral dust is like course sand paper and combined with the sea salt off the lagoon and reef destroys moving parts of bikes. Not a good combination! My neighbour John and I have continued to go out surfing with the local kids when the tide is right. We took the boys out surfing after work a couple of days last week but towards the end of the week the tides were still too low by the time it was getting dark so arranged for them to go out first thing Saturday at high tide. The boys were impatiently banging on the rusty corrugated fence by the lagoon about 8 am to get John up as they wanted to surf! I’m too far from the beach to hear them, ha! It was a bit windy and messy but we got the boards out and the kids were out for a good 2 ½ hours before the tide dropped too m...