A big botaki

  

My people gave me a lovely farewell botaki and I have said goodbye to my Kiribati family, my home “Ocean View” and the friends I made there.

The I-Kiribati people with music and dance in their hearts and souls know how to show it and shared their best with me in those last weeks on Tarawa.

Nei Leigh with her mother & brother

 

As part of my leaving my island home I was taken to Buariki on North Tarawa for 3 nights to meet the grand parents of Nei Leigh (a gorgeous 5 month old & my namesake !). We travelled on a local outrigger canoe with a dozen other passengers, various supplies and sheltering from rain under a well-used & leaky tarp.

The trip back was another thing. 

After an extended stay (no canoes) it was an early morning truck ride to the village of Abaokoro before becoming passenger number 50 something heading back to South Tarawa.  Transportation across water is the only option to move produce between atolls so bags of coconuts, crabs, bundles of thatch, loose pumpkins and roosters were waded across the mid -tide to fill the canoes hull and spill out on the out rigger. 

Rooster awaiting rescuing !

 

 A full canoe

For over a year I had seen these over loaded canoes thinking you’d need to be nuts to get on board. I did take a life vest (which seemed to get whisked into the hull before I even knew it) and noted the rather jaded ones on board but I did keenly keep my eyes on the distant land. We were all travelling fine until about 40 minutes out when the engine cut, my OMG moment was soon abated and no great drama incurred, just a roster that fell in and needed to be rescued !  

Safely back on land the next five days were goodbyes, packing and an ever change date and time for my farewell work botaki. As I looked around my home I was starting to think why I hadn’t learnt the skill of only having what you need, how had I managed to gather so much stuff ? Each day and hour seemed to be filled with gatherings, meals, a last game of tennis (which I won) and in real Kiribati style, no electricity !   This country really does give it to you right to the end, another five days of candlelight and bucket washes (big thanks to the rain gods).

My farewell botaki did happen, the program was delightful, grand speeches in English and Kiribati filled the ears, much food was consumed and my favourite, hours of twisting to local music until sweat was dripping inside my new red and black tabuta.  I was presented with a delightful small decorative local canoe to place in my home to represent  my steering of the organization in the right direction and a miniature eel trap. I’m not so sure that too much steering was done but I am pleased with the direction the “strong giants” of Te Toa Matoa are heading, as for the eel trap I think it’ll gain wonderful “guess this object” status.

My last two nights in Kiribati were hectic, delightful and vastly different. One staying with friends at a local “resort” in an enchanted grass roofed hut over the water with the lights, sounds and mayhem of South Tarawa in the distant and the other doing last minute packing to candle light, a dinner of brazil nuts and drinking luke warm pimms and tonic with friends dropping in.

My home for second last night in Kiribati

 

Next it was the 5.30am airport pick-up and my last moments with my Kiribati family.

Two trucks filled with 30 or more children & adults, wheelchairs, mats, guitars, and a breakfast of bread & tinned meat and toddy to drink filled half the departure area.

I had said many goodbyes to “my people” in the days previous but I knew this was going to be the BIG one. In my mind and heart I had played out this day and these moments, in my dress rehearsal the tears would well. I was in unknown territory, what do you say to people you are not likely to see ever again, people that you have seen almost every day for 15 months, eaten with, danced with, slept alongside of, sat with in their villages, been with as they buried their loved ones. 

 With some of the women & girls at the airport

In what I have gleaned from Kiribati, it’s a place of contradictions, it’s polarising, it’s paradise and misery, my airport

 farewell was much the same. Explosions of joy and sadness erupted as songs, hugs and tears added to the growing weight of gifts that filled my bag and adorned my body.

I paid my departure tax, got my red eyes through customs, walked to the plane and looked back to a sea of waving hands. As the plane took off I had a view of the trucks waiting on the side of the runway with everyone waving and smiling, my head rested against the window and the tears rolled.

As the plane climbed higher that slither of land, an atoll I have called home quickly evaporated into the vast blue sea that surrounds it. The same sea that one-day may consume the people, the history and the traditions and culture that I have been privileged to part of.

Kiribati, it’s people, “my people” have given me memories to recall and touched my heart.

UP NEXT : Back on Aussie soil