Funafala

Funafala is an islet on the south-western rim of Funafuti, the atoll that is the capital of Tuvalu, and it is the quiet the capital does not have: a few families, a church, palms, a beach on the lagoon and the reef on the ocean side, half an hour by boat from the crowded strip of Fongafale across the water — where six thousand people, more than half the country, live along a runway that becomes the public square every evening when the last plane has gone and the island comes out to play volleyball and walk on the tarmac. In the war, when the Americans made Fongafale an airbase in 1943, the people were moved to Funafala and it was the capital for a while; the memory is kept. Around the lagoon of Te Namo — twenty-four kilometres by eighteen, two hundred and seventy-five square kilometres of water inside a ring of thirty islets whose land adds up to two and a half — the western rim is the Funafuti Conservation Area, six islets and their reef closed to fishing since 1996, where the turtles nest and the birds are undisturbed and the water is the clearest in the country. Tuvalu is nine atolls and eleven thousand people, and its highest point is four and a half metres above a sea that is rising; the king tides of February and March come up through the coral into the houses; and the country has begun, in 2023, to build new land at Fongafale's edge with the Tuvalu Coastal Adaptation Project, and to say, in the world's assemblies, that it intends to stay.

The traveller comes on the Fiji Airways flight from Suva, three times a week, which fixes the stay at three or four nights, sleeps at the government hotel at Vaiaku or in one of the family lodges, and lets the island set the pace: the runway at six in the evening; the lagoon by boat to Funafala for the day or, better, for a night in a hut arranged with the family, with the fish and the coconut and the church on Sunday; the Conservation Area with the ranger's permit, for the snorkelling and the turtles; the market and the maneapa, the meeting house; the philatelic bureau, whose stamps have paid for much; and the causeway and the reclaimed land at the north end, where the country is making its argument in sand.

The Guide's honesty, held with special love: Tuvalu is small, remote and simple, and it is not a resort — the hotel is plain, the food is fish, rice and what the plane brought, the internet is thin, and there is little to do in the ordinary sense, which is the reason to go; the traveller comes with cash in Australian dollars, respect for the Sunday, and time; the flights are few and they change, and a missed one is a week; the sea is the country's question and it is not for the traveller to answer, but the traveller who has walked Funafala's beach and heard the singing in the church knows what the numbers mean; and the Guide keeps this page as it keeps North Tarawa's — with special love — for a country that has asked the world to remember it while it is still here, and for the evening on Funafala when the lagoon goes flat and gold and the frigatebirds come home over the palms.