North Tarawa

North Tarawa is the other half of the atoll — the string of islets that runs up the eastern arm of Tarawa's V from the bridge at Buota to the point at Naa, thirty kilometres of coral, palms and lagoon shore where six thousand people live in villages the old way, while South Tarawa, the crowded arm along the bottom, holds sixty thousand on a strip of causeways from Betio to the airport at Bonriki. Here the islets are separated by channels that fill and empty with the tide, crossed by boat or waded at low water; the villages — Abatao, Tabiteuea, Abaokoro with the island council and the clinic, Buariki, the last large one before the point — are thatched houses on the lagoon, bwia platforms over the water for the afternoon, the maneaba at the centre where the elders sit, the church, and the toddy cutters climbing the palms at dawn and dusk; and the traveller sleeps in a kiakia, a village guesthouse of thatch and mats, with the family's fish and breadfruit. Kiribati is thirty-three atolls across an ocean the size of a continent, straddling the Equator and the date line; the sea is rising against it, and the king tides come into the houses of the south; and at Betio, at the western tip of the south, the memory of November 1943 — the seventy-six hours of the battle of Tarawa, more than six thousand dead, American and Japanese and Korean, in a place the size of a park — is kept in the bunkers and the guns and the memorials, and the Guide keeps it in the page it wrote for Betio, in dignity.

The traveller comes on the Fiji Airways flight from Nadi, or from Nauru or the Marshalls, sleeps a first night in South Tarawa, and crosses to the north by the bridge at Buota and a boat or a truck along the islets, with a stay arranged in a village kiakia through the council or the tourism office — a night or two at Abaokoro or Buariki, with the tide's timetable in hand for the wading of the channels; the lagoon at dawn and the ocean reef at low tide; the toddy and the te bua, the songs of the maneaba, if invited; the church on Sunday; and, back in the south, a morning at Betio's memorials and a walk on the causeway at sunset when the whole atoll comes out. The traveller who wants an outer island altogether takes the small plane to Abaiang or Marakei, an hour of coral and blue.

The Guide's honesty, held with special love: North Tarawa is not a resort and has no wish to be one — the kiakias are thatch and mats, the water is what the tank holds, the food is fish, coconut, breadfruit and rice, and the day is the tide's and the sun's; the traveller comes with cash in Australian dollars, respect for the maneaba and the Sunday, modest dress, and time; the flights are few and change; South Tarawa is crowded and its water and its beaches are not clean, and the traveller who stays there stays with clear eyes; the sea is the country's question, and Kiribati has bought land in Fiji against the day; and a lagoon-side evening at Buariki, with the tide coming in over the flats, the children in the water and the toddy song from the palms, is the Pacific of before, which is why the Guide holds this page as it holds Funafala's — with special love, and for as long as the atoll is there.