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In the
South Seas Hotel in Suva, Fiji, there is a very
lonely man. He’s a retired American who lives in
New Zealand and "winters" in Fiji He lives
in a single room. He eats dinner alone every
evening. He watches television a lot, and goes to
the cinema a lot - on his own.
I stayed at the
South Seas for two weeks before the Banaban
Homecoming Trip began, and when I returned there,
six weeks later, I was glad to see a familiar face
"Hi!" I said, "How are you?"
The American man
returned my greeting and then said, with a big grin,
"Sorry to hear your trip didn’t work
out",
"But it did
work out in the end, I said. "We got to Banaba
and had a great time!"
"No you
didn’t," he argued. "I read all about it
in the papers. Your ship never turned up!"
"No, but we
still got there,’’ I protested.
"No you
didn’t. I saw it on the news, when you got back to
Suva. And there were some people here who...
"Yes, we had
to pay a bit more to fly to Tarawa with Air Nauru,
but I’d planned to go to Nauru anyway, and it was
on the same ticket..."
"How much did
you have to pay altogether, then?" he
challenged, jutting out his chin.
"$1,500, but
that was..."
The American
man’s grin was turning into a petulant sneer
"$1,500? You could get to Tarawa for $200 by
sea and stay in a hostel for US $10 a night.
"But we didn’t have to pay for our
accommodation, food or internal transport on the
islands, and we had the most fabulous
entertainment...
But the American
man didn’t want to hear any more. He’d clearly
been gloating over our "disaster" for the
entire time I’d been away! I decided not to dampen
his pleasure at our misfortune any more, as I
guessed he was the type who could never appreciate
the taste of freshly caught fish cooked over an open
fire, roasted with fresh coconut, or not cooked at
all! Or the joy of beautiful soaring voices singing
in harmony, or the rousing spirit of Banaban
dancing. Banaban entertainment is first class, and
it’s clearly practised constantly!
Rabi is absolutely
beautiful - lush, green and serene. Banaba has a
very different kind of beauty. Far from being the
stereotypical tropical paradise island, Banaba is
wild, dramatic even. Wherever you are on the island
you can hear the surf pounding against the reef, a
reef which is about as treacherous as a Pacific
island can offer. The currents around the island are
so strong that bathing is never a gentle experience
- you’re constantly tugged to and fro, and if you
swim at the wrong time or in the wrong place you
could be cut to shreds on the sharp coral, or swept
right away.
Banaba’s famous
coral pinnacles that mark the island’s gouged-out
interior are no less razor-like than the reef. They
are so sharp they leave their mark on any part of
the body they come into contact with. Falling
against one would not be a pleasant experience, and
protective clothing is essential. It’s almost
impossible to imagine that they were once buried
underneath pleasant village communities. Tangled
scrub now grows between them where the phosphate
used to lie, adding mote dangerous traps for the
unwary rambler. You need a machete as well as
protective clothing to explore Banaba
For people who
remember the 60s and early 70s, Banaba is a surreal time warp.
The BPC apparently didn’t pack up when they left.
All signs of the traditional Banaban way of life,
their houses and coconut trees, were consumed by the
mining operation, to be replaced by a very different
European lifestyle Now the rocky outcrop that lies
isolated in the vast Pacific Ocean is host to a
decaying museum of 1960s Eurobilia. A power station,
warehouses full of rusting machinery, floodlit
tennis courts, redundant multiple power points,
ensuite bathrooms with showers and mini-baths, all
remain as disintegrating monuments to a brief period
of excess and ludicrously lavish displays of wealth
on an island where most natural resources were in
short supply and had to be shipped in from overseas!
Nature and the
Banaban people are starting to reclaim their
territory, but it’s not going to be easy. It took
billions of years for Banaba to evolve into an
island fit for human habitation, Now there’s the
small coastal fringe for its 500 people to live on
-most of the island is a dark, bushy jungle
overshadowed by towering pinnacles, a mausoleum to
our incredible technological ability to destroy in
just a few decades what it took nature several
million years to build.
Nauru
Nauru has some
striking similarities to Banaba. Geologically they differ
only in size, Nauru being larger by a few square
kilometres. Nauru’s surf is just as powerful and
as treacherous as Banaba’s, Nauru is actually a
lot more pleasant and interesting to visit than all
those sneering articles written about it would
suggest. But on the negative side, Nauru has had the
privilege of being able to carry out its own mining
self-·destruction, starting where the BPC left off
at Independence in 1988. The landmark cantilever,
the industrial plant, the conveyor belts and mining
machinery are all still in use, as Nauru’s
phosphate isn’t quite exhausted - yet. The large colonial
houses are there too, and the two I visited were in
great condition, well-maintained by people who have
the money and the material supplies to look after
them. Nauru’s good fortune in lying on the right
side of the old Anglo-German dividing line means
that today it has many things that Banaba lacks,
such as trees, supply ships and a regular air
service.
Sadly, Nauru has
maintained the old colonial tradition of "them
and us" in the British-built foreign labourers
housing, soullessly named "Location’’, a
large, overcrowded slum area. Location’s school
receives just a small percentage of the public
funding that Nauru’s other schools receive, and I
could sea no other obvious signs of public
expenditure in the area.
Nauru’s phosphate
fields are if anything an even more horrifying sight
than Banaba’s, as there is less of the shrub
growth that clothe Banaba’s mining scars. In
Nauru, you can stand at the north of the mining
area, where mining is still in operation, and feel a
truly eerie sensation, as you are completely
surrounded by pinnacles as far as the eye can see.
Some areas are white with newly-exposed phosphate,
many on their second excavation. As the phosphate is
running out, Nauru’s financial future is rather
uncertain, and some Nauruans are returning to their
traditional ways of living. The seas around the
island are often crowded with small fishing boats,
and if you visit the interior, Topside, in the
evening, you’ll probably pass quite few young men
out hunting for noddy birds, with nets at the end of
long metal poles.
Maybe Nauruans are
taking heed of all those finger-wagging articles
about their country’s poor health statistics, as
the tennis courts and sports fields seem to be full
most of the time. But no doubt there are still many
Nauruans who prefer to spend most of their leisure
time slumped on the couch in front of the telly
eating pizza and drinking beer. Rather like the
British backpackers I’m hostelling with in Sydney
at the moment, in fact...
Maybe we could all
do with a course in Banaban-style home
entertainment!
Copyright:
N. Minnis, 24th. September, 1997
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