Back to the Middle Ages

There was a celebration in Bairiki Square in May to encourage people to use the ‘Green Bag.’ The Green Bag is a plastic garbage bag where you can put your rubbish and on certain days of the week depending on which Tarawa islet you live on, a truck comes and collects the bags on the main road and delivers to the dump. The bags cost 20 cents which is a cheap even here but only a few stores sell the bags.  I am not sure why but it could be because they have to pay for the bags upfront.

Littering in Tarawa is one of the big issues to solve. Honestly, you couldn’t hope to see a more beautiful island but the locals except for the trash that can be given to pigs and dogs prefer to throw it down. It doesn’t matter if they are on the beach, outside their own house, on the road or in the Tarawa Lagoon. My neighbors even like to throw their trash over the fence into my yard I guess because they have run out of room in their own.

Trash dominates the landscape and some seem quite comfortable with it or maybe they just accept things as there.

Littering of course is not precluded to Tarawa. It does go on in other places even where there are hefty fines for doing so. But in other places the trash may be less intrusive because of the larger land masses.  Tarawa, on the other hand, is a small space. The population per square meter on the Betio islet for example exceeds that of Hong Kong.

I know that there are people who are waiting for someone to invent a time machine so they can travel back to the Middle Ages. Luckily for me I don’t need the machine as I am already there and just in time for the plague.

Location Location Location

When I am in Tarawa I usually live in a little house in Teaoraereke right on the lagoon but have made a change. I now live on Betio island, which is an island separated by a 3 mile causeway from South Tarawa.

The real estate market here hasn't exactly taken off but when it does, I could be located in a prime spot. My house is within feet of key tourist attractions, two beaches and on a relatively pristine street with famous or infamous neighbors depending on your point of view.

Betio is the site of the famous WWII battle of Tarawa where 6,400 Japanese, Korean and American soldiers died over a period of just 72 hours. My new house is within 100 feet of two of guns from this battle. I walked over to take a look recently and found a man with his pants down and realized that the use has changed from artillery to public

conveniences.

Tarawa Lagoon





Pacific Ocean

If I stand in the road in front of my house, I can see the Pacific ocean on one side and the Tarawa lagoon on the other side. 

There is a handy convenience store on our street that offers canned foods, local fried donuts and a barbecue on Fridays.

My neighbors are friendly and include locals, a Kenyan couple and two couples from Fiji heading up some of Kiribati's best companies. The Kenyans are turning their yard into a farm to try and secure a constant food supply. This is a good idea but I just wish that their three roosters would sleep in on weekends.

I am also able to walk to work now as my office is only 3 miles away. I haven't decided yet whether this is an advantage or disadvantage considering the condition of the road and surrounding debris that I have to navigate through. It does make for an eventful morning though with people yelling out hey Imatang! all along the way and trying to avoid collisions with oncoming school kids, cars, pigs and dogs.

I came home from shopping the other day to find the police at the end of my road. They brought one of my neighbors out in hand cuffs and put him in the back of their truck. A few minutes later, his two sisters joined him. These are the same neighbors that had climbed coconut trees for me a week earlier to bring down my favorite drink here--the moimoto. When I asked what had happened, another neighbor told me that the man came home drunk and chopped off his brother’s hand. I still like my location but I think it is a good idea from now on if I keep my gate locked.