I did not want to cause a scene, but walking across the tarmac I did feel it was my duty to highlight to the members of Te Iitibwerere that the two engines were connected to the wings with masking tape. Really. They regarded this as very funny, and I knew then that the I-Kiribati would remain forever unfathomable to me. It was explained to us that the masking tape wasn’t actually connecting the engines to the wings, but merely covering up the parts of the plane that were corroded through with rust, and strangely, as I regarded the swaths of masking tape elsewhere on the fuselage, I didn’t really feel that much better.
The interior of the aircraft, a CASA, resembled that of an aging, decrepit school bus, complete with benches, though it was not nearly so large or comfortable. As we taxied, I hoped that someone was restraining the dogs, pigs, and children that usually occupied the runway. Pigs, let it be said, are stupid animals, though, as we discovered earlier, they do make landing a plane on Tarawa a uniquely interesting experience. Once we were in the air, a cool breeze was felt inside the cabin and it would have been pleasant had it originated from an air-conditioning unit. Clearly, more masking tape was needed. Two men, wiser than I, sought comfort on top of the luggage that was strewn haphazardly in the back of the plane, and as the engine coughed and sputtered and the aircraft trembled, I found myself envying them their alcoholic stupor. The Pacific Ocean below appeared placid and lush and impossibly vast, like a blue universe unraveling toward infinity. It seemed presumptuous to fly over something so expansive and grand as the Pacific Ocean in a contraption so pitiful as ours, and I thought it ominous that when we began to descend we could see in the near distance the island of Makin, a small atoll traditionally regarded as inhabited by the spirits of the I-Kiribati no longer residing in the temporal world. Missionaries, however, dispute this.
Landing on a rock-strewn strip cleared of coconut trees was exactly as I expected it would be. Terrifying. The passenger door jammed, and we scrambled out through the rear cargo door and soon we began to feel like Martian invaders. I-Matang I-Matang, said a chorus of tiny voices. But they quieted when I bared my teeth, and the youngest even scattered into the bush. Parents in Kiribati tell their children to behave or otherwise an I-Matang will devour them, which has led to the wonderful result that the younger segment of the population believes I-Matangs to be cannibals. I, of course, did nothing to dissuade them. Literary endeavors, which I imagined myself to be engaged in, were not enhanced by an audience of children clustered by the windows, watching raptly as I silently pleaded for a thought. In Kiribati, solitude was granted only to the wicked.
With Te Iitibwerere we piled into the Island Council Land Rover, which was dented and scratched and had the words With the Compliments of the People’s Republic of China stenciled on the door. The Land Rover was driven by the island clerk, who is referred to as the island “clark,” an anglicization that reminds the visitor that this is a Commonwealth country, where, just like in England, pronunciation has little to do with spelling.
“How many cars are there on Butaritari?” I asked the clerk.
He pondered this for a long time. “Three,” he finally replied.
“How many cars work?” Sylvia asked.
“One.”
We barreled down the island’s one, lonesome dirt road toward the main village. There were two guesthouses on the island. Te Iitibwerere were staying in the government-owned guesthouse, but we knew enough about the sensibilities of the government of Kiribati to choose the privately owned guesthouse, a tidy cinder-block house of three bedrooms notable for its enigmatic living room. On one wall, a mural depicted a bare-breasted young maiden kneeling as a supplicant to a can of Foster’s lager. On another wall was a glow-in-the-dark crucifix, above which hung the flag of the Kiribati Protestant Church. Obviously, we had stumbled across an avant-garde depiction of the duality of human nature, and I made a note to re-create this scene one day and sell it as an installation piece for an enormous sum to Charles Saatchi, the British art collector—known for his rather expensive view on what constitutes art. A cow carcass? An empty room? How much did you want for that?
Evening light descended, and as we walked through the village the air itself began to assume pink and blue hues. The dinner hour approached and fires were lit and the smoke settled over the village as a fine mist, capturing the soft light of sunset. The homes we passed were traditional structures of coconut wood platforms raised on stilts with a triangular roof thatched with pandanus leaves. These huts, called bua, were set on family compounds around which chickens, pigs, and dogs combated for scraps. The youngest children were naked and the oldest women, reverting to custom at twilight, were bare-breasted. Others, both men and women, wore wraparound lavalavas and T-shirts. A toothless old man, a respected village elder, greeted us warmly while bedecked in a frayed T-shirt that read Shit Happens, which seemed particularly apt in Kiribati.
The blue of the lagoon darkened, blending into the sky, and the small islets that rose from the reef were no longer distinguishable from the clouds neatly bisected by the horizon. Our perceptions were blissfully focused on the evening songs and the beauty of a dying sunset, when we stumbled upon a haunting example of the detritus of World War II. On a small beach, rippling waves lapped at the skeletal remains of a Japanese seaplane, destroyed when the Americans attacked in 1943, liberating the island from the Japanese, who had occupied the island since December 1941. Small boys threw stones at the rusting hulk, as no doubt their fathers had done before. Further, a small shrine consisting of a stone slab on which a rising sun was painted commemorated the Japanese losses.
Dusk quickly turned into night, too quickly for us as we staggered back to the guesthouse in pre-moon darkness. There was no electricity on the island. Kerosene lanterns swayed from the rafters of wood and thatch dwellings, casting figures and objects as shadows flickering through incandescent orange firelight. Dogs awoke from the torpor of the day. They were fighting somewhere nearby and we heard staccato barking and one dog yelping and then only whining and silence. Dogs were eaten on Butaritari, but regrettably, demand did not keep up with supply, and so, as on Tarawa, we walked carrying large rocks.
Back at the guesthouse, we were greeted by Edma, the matronly woman who prepared the meals. She was very thoughtful. No doubt, she believed that as I-Matangs we would prefer to eat I-Matang food, which in Kiribati took the form of fat-enhanced corned beef, served straight out of the can atop a bed of rice. This meat product was regarded as a great delicacy in Kiribati, and I believe that we left Edma befuddled with our request to eat only what the island could provide, she thinking undoubtedly that we were peculiar for wanting the food that the I-Kiribati would prefer to avoid, having eaten fish and breadfruit every day of their lives. But we didn’t care. Nothing could induce us to eat canned corned beef, which is vile and repellent and gag-inducing.
Later that night, it occurred to us why the handful of cinder-block houses on Butaritari were used solely for storage and daytime entertaining. As we watched the geckos flit across the walls, gorging on clouds of insects, we realized that the windows were without screening. The brick walls trapped the heat of the day and nothing stirred the stagnant air. Rats scurried around us. This bothered Sylvia. Tantalizingly, there was an unoccupied bua outside. We contemplated it, but then noticed that the house dog was in heat, attracting a dozen or so male dogs who ceaselessly mauled each other for the privilege, and so we remained indoors, sweltering, frequently bitten by carnivorous mosquitoes, and not at all amused by the resident rodents. “But at least there are no cockroaches,” I noted brightly. Sylvia needed cheering up.
Fortunately, there was also daytime Butaritari. We had a couple of days until Te Iitibwerere was scheduled to perform in the villages and so we toured the island on our own. Our wanderings kept us primarily on the lagoon side of the atoll, where nature offered such an alluring scene of idyllic paradise that one can understand why in the nineteenth century seamen abandoned their ships and their lives and became beachco
mbers. At low tide, the lagoon retreated, leaving a vast expanse of barren and desolate mudflats, where the ocean beyond shimmered like a mirage. But at high tide, with the clear azure water again lapping gently on a sandy beach that held not a single footprint, the scenery evolved, and as we stared into infinity, perhaps suffering from a mild case of sunstroke, it occurred to us that the essence of life is derived from the color blue—liquid blue, pale blue, deep blue, shades of blue separated first by the breakers that cascaded on a distant reef and then by the horizon. It is quite possible to spend hours doing nothing but floating like driftwood in water as warm as the tropical air, stealing glances at solitary mangrove trees rising brazenly from the lagoon, and the wall of coconut trees leaning over the shoreline offering a shady respite.
Of course, just as we were convinced that we had returned to Eden who should show up but a brightly banded sea snake. This snake’s claim to fame is that it is the most venomous creature in the world, and its presence as we snorkeled over an old fish trap was not entirely welcome. Like many, I regard snakes as a tangible expression of evil, and I would be very pleased if evolution saw fit to attach large flags to the slinking reptiles, just so we would always know where they were. Perhaps I was still shaken from my time as a landscaper, when in the backyard of a family’s home I experienced an epic conflagration between an angry copperhead and an unforgiving weed whacker. I have ever since been wary of things that slithered. But the sea snake wasn’t slithering, it wasn’t even swimming, it just floated in the warm water, drifting contentedly, and I remembered that to be bitten by this, the most lethargic critter in the world, is to be guilty of being very, very stupid. The only instances I had heard of sea snakes biting involved people sticking a finger down its throat or instigating coitus interruptus among amorous snakes, and I don’t think the human gene pool has suffered greatly from the results. Even Sylvia, clearly sun-drunk, declared that she found the snake “pretty.” Then she began talking to the fairy terns. “Pheeet-pheet,” she called to them. A lagoonside beach on Butaritari is like that.
The great pleasure of Butaritari was that with a population of just three thousand, the atoll was as close to pristine as possible. The reef positively exuded health and at low tide the odors emanating from the reef shelf held none of that fetid stench of decomposition, rubbish, and shit that so marred everyone’s existence on Tarawa. One morning, we left the guesthouse and wandered off in search of an oceanside beach where only some good snorkeling would interrupt hours of resplendent nothingness. We headed toward Ukiangang, a village close to the western end of Butaritari. The road drifted away from the lagoon and toward the middle of the atoll, where breezes did not reach. By mid-morning, the sun was unrelenting. As we walked past the few bua on this part of the road, we saw the inhabitants slumbering in the shadows, waiting for the intensity of the sun to lessen before emerging. Sometimes a child’s voice could be heard, notifying all who could hear that I-Matangs were walking past. Otherwise, it was still.
It was clear why the people of Butaritari were regarded as lazy by the rest of the country. The relatively abundant rainfall had made life on the island comparatively easy. Unlike the central and southern Gilberts, which experience little rainfall and much drought, Butaritari enjoys a true wet season. Subsistence living therefore requires much less work. On most atolls, which offer one of the Earth’s harshest environments, only the coconut palm tree thrives. But on Butaritari, we walked past trees laden with breadfruit, pandanus, bananas, and papaya, as well as many small gardens. There was such an overabundance of fruit that much of it was allowed to drop uncollected, something unheard of elsewhere in Kiribati. And both the lagoon and the ocean were teeming with fish. I had always thought the term “subsistence affluence,” an expression used by international development–types, to be an oxymoron, but on Butaritari, where the cash economy has little relevance, it seemed appropriate.
As we neared the taro pits outside Ukiangang, we turned off the main road and followed a slender bush trail up a northward-jutting peninsula. No one seemed to live on this stretch of land, and so we dropped our anti-dog rocks. After hiking some distance through the bush, we were greeted by an ocean intent on asserting its dominance over the atoll. The waves broke heavily on the reef, a continuous roar punctuated by the cracking sound associated with nearby lightning or artillery fire. The reef extended a mere fifteen yards or so before plummeting into the depths, and waves carried the height and power of ocean swells before breaking, sending frothy chaos barreling toward the rocky shore. Idling on the ocean surface just beyond the breakers were fisherman in small, traditional outrigger canoes, rising and falling with the waves, seeking the evening’s dinner.
We searched for a small bay or inlet, the likely launching point for the canoes, hoping to find calm water where we could don our snorkeling gear. After making our way through an ankle-twisting landscape of narrow crevices and slippery boulders, we came across a small bay framed by a golden beach where dozens of canoes rested under canopies of thatch. Venturing into the turquoise water, we swam among coral and fish of dazzling color. An incoming tide taunted us by spitting into our snorkels and hurling us perilously close to the boulders that cropped up in the most inconvenient of places. We turned to swim back to the beach, when suddenly we found ourselves surrounded by dolphins, a school of twenty-some intent on displaying a playful form of perfection, gleefully leaping into the air, twisting and turning, before falling back into the sea, and as they swam around us they seemed as happy to see us as we them, which could not possibly be true.
TE IITIBWERERE, the theater troupe we had traveled with, were the island equivalent of Hollywood stars. True, they didn’t have any money, nor did they live in fancy houses, and they weren’t stalked by paparazzi and autograph hounds, and Botox and personal trainers didn’t figure very prominently in their lives, but in the entertainment world of Kiribati they were stars. On Butaritari, they were to perform plays in each of the island’s villages. They were five women and one man, whom we will call Lothario as he was then married to one cast member and dating another, which added a certain frisson to their performances. They were staying in the guesthouse adjacent to ours, a government-owned cinder-block house that looked very much like a chicken coop. It lacked beds, running water, and a generator, and it was more abundant in rats than our guesthouse. It did, however, have the benefit of being perched atop a seawall overlooking the lagoon. On Butaritari the hours between dusk and dawn pass slowly and quietly, unless, of course, you are traveling with both your wife and your mistress, and so on most evenings we attached ourselves to the troupe. Around sunset, a fish would be cleaned and a bottle that once contained soy sauce but now brimmed with sour toddy would be passed around. A guitar was strummed and they would sing under the expanding white light of a rounding moon and a million stars. Bright is the moonlight on an equatorial atoll.
“Okay,” Tawita said, finishing a sweet tune and turning to me and Sylvia. “Now it’s your turn. You must sing.”
I dreaded this. It often happened that we were asked to sing. The I-Kiribati are unself-conscious about singing. This is because they have the voices of angels. When I sing, however, small children begin to cry, dogs whimper, and rats scurry to the water and drown themselves. Sylvia, who is ravishingly beautiful, possesses a formidable intellect, and whose very existence illuminates my life, sings like a distressed cow. Entire villages scatter into the bush when we sing together. I tried to explain this to Tawita, but she was having none of it. “You must sing. Do not be shy.”
And so we did. We sang Bob Dylan’s Tambourine Man. We sang it just like Bob, with raspy, nasally voices and a peculiar sense of harmony. Heeey Mr. Tambourine Man/ Play aaa song fer me/ I’m nooot sleepy and there is no place I’m goiiiiing tooo.
The theater troupe drowned themselves in the lagoon before we could finish. Actually, they didn’t do that. Rather, they drowned in tears of laughter. It began with a snicker that turned into a titter which led to guffaws and soon
the group was convulsing in hysterical laughter.
“Stop!” Tawita cried. “That was very bad.”
“Yes,” I said. “We are aware of that.”
“You must never sing again,” she said.
“That is how we prefer it.”
During the days, Te Iitibwerere guided us through the formalities of the maneaba, which functions essentially like a town hall, a community center, a church, a Motel 6, and the U.S. Senate, but with more dignity. A maneaba, typically built with coconut wood, thatch, and coconut fiber rope, can be upward of a hundred feet long and sixty feet high, and it is here that just about everything of consequence occurs. Kiribati is a deeply conservative country, and inside the maneaba etiquette is important. As an I-Matang accustomed to a culture that no longer has much place for formality and tradition, I paid attention. There were rules, Tawita explained. Women, for instance, must never reveal their thighs. Breasts, fine. Thighs, no. Shoes must be taken off before entering a maneaba, and it is considered bad form to sit with legs outstretched, pointing your blackened soles at those across. Sitting cross-legged is best, but since you can be sure that once inside a maneaba you will not be leaving for at least a couple of hours, you soon find yourself quietly stretching and unknotting, here and there daring an outstretched foot. A hat must never be worn inside a maneaba, and on some islands hats must be removed even if you are simply walking past a maneaba. If biking, you should dismount and walk. “Also,” Tawita continued, “what is it called when you make a stinky from your backside?”
The Sex Lives of Cannibals Page 21