KIRIBATI- HINTERGRUND

Eating Out In Butaritari by Cleo Paskal

 

How do you say 'no' to food? In many places, it is simply the most important gift imaginable. To refuse it, is to refuse the embodiment of place. It is like going to church but, when communion time comes around, peering suspiciously at the wafer and saying "No thanks, I... uh... just ate". To travel is to taste life and, sometimes, it tastes awful.

I have grinned through gritted teeth while choking down whole garlic cloves laced with pickled octopus tentacles in the Yaeyama Islands. I smilingly pretended the Okinawan raw horse meat I chewed, for what seemed like several weeks, was actually (very) rare roast beef. I graciously plunged my hands up to the wrists in a congealing brownish glop that my Malian host assured me had been, at one time, goat and muttered "yum yum" as I sucked on the sinewy chunk that had snagged my fingernail. You do what has to be done.

However hard it was for me, the giving is, often, more difficult than the receiving. Who knows how many precious chickens were throttled in my name; how many winter stocks I have inadvertently pillaged. Procuring food takes it's toll. Which is why I want to tell you this story. It's not my story, it belongs to Winnie Powell, the indomitable medicine woman of Butaritari Island. It belongs to her and to her island, which isn't really an island but rather an Atoll in the Central Pacific. Butaritari belongs to a country no one has ever heard of called Kiribati. It is a real country and this is a real story.

I only know it because I was sick. I went to visit Winnie and, within 36 hours, was curled up on a pandanus mat, shivering with fever and suffering from what Winnie knowingly called "the flu with a touch of 'epatitis". She mixed me some medicine out of twigs, roots and rain water (which doesn't actually qualify as 'food' so I will pass over them as quickly as they passed through me) and initiated a regime of massages designed to lower my temperature and channel the flu into my stomach. This didn't seem like such a good idea as my stomach seemed to already have its fair share of the flu. Which brings me closer to The Story.

What with my stomach filling up with flu and all, I wasn't very hungry. Winnie insisted I eat and offered me the full range of local dishes: bananas, fish, paw paw, coconut and swamp taro. That was it. The full range. Oh, granted there is a world of difference between roasted swamp taro and grated swamp taro but being deathly ill allows you certain privileges and it gets to the point where you grab those privileges by the throat and scream into their collective face 'NO MORE SWAMP TARO OR I WILL PUKE."

And that was when Winnie told me The Story. It started, as all good stories do, once upon a time, not so very long ago....

The dolphins and the humans lived in separate but equal worlds. The dolphins kept watch over the sea and the humans oversaw the land. There was mutual respect and liking but they rarely got together for a chat. In fact, there were only two families on Butaritari Island who had the knowledge that allowed them to Call The Dolphins.

Calling the dolphins was difficult and dangerous and would only be undertaken in times of hunger. It started when the Caller was asleep. She (or he) would guide her dreams towards the land where dolphins dreams. There, unhindered by physical considerations like incompatible vocal chords, she could speak directly to the dreams of the sleeping dolphins.

The Caller of dolphins was invariably well received. The dolphins loved company. Once introductory pleasantries were over ("Thanks for returning that lost sailor." "No problem, glad to do it. He had a lovely way of caressing my blowhole."), the Caller stated the real reason for the visit. "I have been sent to invite the dolphins to a dance in our lagoon. Can you come?"

That always thrilled the dolphins. They would get excited and the shades of their sub-conscious would glimmer a bit brighter. "Oh Yes! Yes, of course, we would be happy to come. How many of us would you like? Just the big ones or the small ones too? The usual place?". The Caller would say "of course the same place" and add how many were invited and of what age. Then, politely excusing herself, she would quietly fade back into consciousness.

The next day, just before high tide, the whole village would go down to the lagoon and watch the sea channel expectantly. Soon the dolphins would start to arrive. The teenagers and young adults of the village took off their clothes and hung them on The Tree Upon Which You Hang Your Clothes, then they dove into the lagoon and paired off with the dolphins. The humans, gently holding onto their hosts, would murmur sweet nothings into where they imagined dolphin ears to be. As parents and siblings watched from the shore, singing and dancing encouragingly, the human/dolphin couples frolicked in the crystal aquamarine waters. Occasionally, a mischievously adventurous pair would even go out into the darker blue waters of the open sea, returning only hours later.

Eventually, the tide would falter and the time would come to end the dance. The dolphins knew what to do next. One by one, they would beach themselves, always in the same spot and always facing the same direction. The swimmers quietly got their clothes from The Tree and stood watching. Emotions crackled in the air. Sorrow, pain, gratitude, love and, darting about like an embarrassed streaker, hunger.

Some of the stronger men picked up the hatchets that had been lying on the cool grass since the morning and, caressing the lean and still wet dolphins with one hand, hacked them to death with the other. As soon as they beached, they were butchered. The meat was quickly and equitably distributed all throughout the island.

Every one got a piece. Everyone except the Caller of dolphins. She had known the dolphins as friends, she had spoken with them. It would be unacceptable for her to eat them.

There was also another price she would be expected to pay. The Caller of the dolphins always died young and, when she died, she could not be buried on the island. Just off the coast of Butaritari there was a dark blot on the turquoise ocean, a bottomless hole in the sea floor that, it was believed, led down into the home of the dolphins. The body of the Caller of the dolphins was brought to this spot and placed in the water. Other bodies would have just floated away , but hers sunk, down, down, reuniting her again and forever with the dolphins, who were always happy to have company. And that sacrifice, dying young, forever being separated from her family, the Caller of the dolphins was willing to make for the honour of being able to provide food for her hungry Island.

And that was the end of Winnie's story.

She looked rather pointedly at the now cold dish of roasted Swamp Taro.

"Boy," I said, "that swamp taro sure looks delicious." Brushing away the flies that weren't already imbedded and struggling in the beige mass, I started munching away dutifully. "Yum yum."

"But Winnie, is that true? Do they still Call the dolphins?"

"The last time the dolphins were Called was about thirty years ago. I had just had my first child so I couldn't swim with them. I watched though... You know, my husband's family is one of the two who can Call. I ask my sister-in-law why she won't do it. She says she doesn't want to die young. I told her it's too late anyway since she is already in her sixties but she still won't do it. I guess she prefers the safer honour of buying the whole island tins of corned beef."

Youth today -- don't know the value of a good meal.

 

 

From: Food: A Taste of the Road; Edited by Richard Sterling; Traveler' Tales; San Francisco; 1996. Copyright Cleo Paskal, 1996. Reproduction in any medium forbidden without consent of the author who can be reached at cleo@paskal.ca and who is much nicer than this stern note implies.

THE CALLING OF THE PORPOISE

 It was common rumour in the Gilbert Islands that certain local clans had the power of porpoise-calling; but it was rather like the Indian rope-trick; you never met anyone who had actually witnessed the thing. If I had been a reasonably plump young man, I might never have come to see what I did see on the beach of Butaritari lagoon. But I was skinny. it was out of sheer pity for my poor thin frame that old Kitiona set his family porpoise-caller working. We were sitting together one evening in his canoe-shed by the beach, and he was delivering a kind of discourse on the beauty of human fatness.
 "A chief of chiefs," he said, "is recognized by his shape. He is fleshy from head to foot. But his greatest flesh is his middle; when he sits, he is based like a mountain upon his sitting place; when he stands, he swells out in the midst, before and behind, like a porpoise." it seemed that in order to maintain that noble bulge a high chief simply must have a regular diet of porpoise-meat; if he didn't, he would soon become lean and bony like a commoner or a white man. The white man was doubtless of chiefly race, thought Kitiona, but his figure could hardly be called beautiful. "And you," he added, looking me up and down with affectionate realism, "are in truth the skinniest white man ever seen in these islands. You sit upon approximately no base at all."
 I laughed (heartily, I hope) and asked what he thought could be done about that. "You should eat porpoise-flesh," he said simply, "then you too would swell in the proper places." That led me to inquire how I might come by a regular supply of the rare meat. The long and the short of his reply was that his own kinsmen in Kuma village, seventeen miles up-lagoon. were the hereditary porpoise-callers of the High Chiefs of Butaritari and Makin-Meang. His first cousin was a leading expert at the game; he could put himself into the right kind of dream on demand. His spirit went out of his body in such a dream; it sought out the porpoise-folk in their home under the western horizon and invited them to a dance, with feasting, in Kuma village. If he spoke the words of the invitation aright (and very few had the secret of them) the porpoise would follow him with cries of joy to the surface.
 Having led them to the lagoon entrance, He would fly forward to rejoin his body and warn the people of their coming. It was quite easy for one who knew the way of it. The porpoise never failed to arrive. Would I like some called for me? After some rather idle shilly-shallying, I admitted that I would; but did he think I should be allowed to see them coming? Yes, he replied, that could probably be arranged. He would talk to his kinsman about it. Let me choose a date for the calling and, if the Kuma folk agreed, his canoe would take me to the village. We fixed on a day early in January, some weeks ahead, before I left him.
 No further word came from Kitiona until his big canoe arrived one morning to collect me. There was not a breath of wind, so sailing was out of the question. The sun was white-hot. it took over six hours of grim paddling to reach our destination. By the time we got there, I was cooked like a prawn and wrapped in gloom. When the fat, friendly man who styled himself the High Chief's hereditary porpoise-caller came waddling down the beach to greet me, I asked irritably when the porpoise would arrive. He said he would have to go into his dream first, but thought he could have them there for me by three or four o'clock. Please, though, he added firmly, would I be careful to call them, from now on, only "our friends from the west". The other name was tabu. They might not come at all if I said it aloud. He led me as he spoke to a little hut screened with newly plaited coconut leaves, which stood beside his ordinary dwelling. Alone in there, he explained, he would do his part of the business. Would I honour his house by resting in it while he dreamed? "Wait in peace now," he said when I was installed, "I go on my journey', and disappeared into the screened hut.
 Kuma was a big village in those days: its houses stretched for half a mile or more above the lagoon beach. The dreamer's hut lay somewhere near the centre of the line. The place was dead quiet that afternoon under its swooning palms. The children had been gathered in under the thatches. The women were absorbed in plaiting garlands and wreaths of flowers. The men were silently polishing their ceremonial ornaments of shell. Their friends from the west were being invited to a dance, and everything they did in the village that day was done to maintain the illusion.
 Even the makings of a feast lay ready piled in baskets beside the houses. I could not bring myself to believe that the people expected just nothing to come of all this careful business.
 But the hot hours dragged by, and nothing happened. Four o'clock passed. My faith was beginning to sag under the strain when a strangled howl burst from the dreamer's hut. I jumped round to see his cumbrous body come hurtling head first through the tom screens. He sprawled on his face, struggled up, and staggered into the open, a slobber of saliva shining on his chin. He stood awhile clawing at the air and whining on a queer high note like a puppy's. Then words came gulping out of him:
 "Teirakel Teirake! (Arise! Arise!)... They come, they come! . . Our friends from the west... They come! ... Let us go down and greet them." He started at a lumbering gallop down the beach.
 A roar went up from the village, "They come, they come!" I found myself rushing helter-skelter with a thousand others into the shallows, bawling at the top of my voice that our friends from the west were coming. I ran behind the dreamer; the rest converged on him from north and south. We strung ourselves out, line abreast, as we stormed through the shallows. Everyone was wearing the garlands woven that afternoon. The farther out we got, the less the clamour grew. When we stopped, breast deep, fifty yards from the reef's edge, a deep silence was upon us; and so we waited.
 I had just dipped my head to cool it when a man near me yelped and stood pointing; others took up his cry, but I could make out nothing for myself at first in the splintering glare of the sun on the water. When at last I did see them, everyone was screaming hard; they were pretty near by then, gambolling towards us at a fine clip. When they came to the edge of the blue water by the reef, they slackened speed, spread themselves out and started cruising back and forth in front of our line. Then, suddenly, there was no more of them.
 In the strained silence that followed, I thought they were gone. The disappointment was so sharp, I did not stop to think then that, even so, I had seen a very strange thing. I was in the act of touching the dreamer's shoulder to take my leave when he turned his still face to me: "The king out of the west comes to meet me," he murmured, pointing downwards. My eyes followed his hand. There, not ten yards away, was the great shape of a porpoise poised like a glimmering shadow in the glass-green water. Behind it followed a whole dusky flotilla of them.
 They were moving towards us in extended order with spaces of two or three yards between them, as far as my eye could reach. So slowly they came, they seemed to be hung in a trance. Their leader drifted in hard by the dreamer's legs. He turned without a word to walk beside it as it idled towards the shallows. I followed a foot or two behind its almost motionless tail. I saw other groups to right and left of us turn shorewards one by one, arms lifted, faces bent upon the water.
 A babble of quiet talk sprang up; I dropped behind to take in the whole scene. The villagers were welcoming their guests ashore with crooning words. Only men were walking beside them; the women and children followed in their wake, clapping their hands softly in the rhythm of a dance. As we approached the emerald shallows, the keels of the creatures began to take the sand; they flapped gently as if asking for help. The men leaned down to throw their arms around the great barrels and ease them over the ridges. They showed no least sign of alarm. It was as if their single wish was to get to the beach.
 When the water stood only thigh deep, the dreamer flung his arms high and called. Men from either flank came crowding in to surround the visitors, ten or more to each beast. Then, "Lift!" shouted the dreamer, and the ponderous black shapes were half-dragged, half-carried, unresisting, to the lip of the tide. There they settled down, those beautiful, dignified shapes, utterly at peace, while all hell broke loose around them. Men, women and children, leaping and posturing with shrieks that tore the sky, stripped off their garlands and flung them around the still bodies, in a sudden dreadful fury of boastfulness and derision. My mind still shrinks from that last scene--the raving humans, the beasts so triumphantly at rest.
 We left them garlanded where they lay and returned to our houses. Later, when the falling tide had stranded them high and dry, men went down with knives to cut them up. There was feasting and dancing in Kuma that night. A chief's portion of the meat was set aside for me. I was expected to have it cured as a diet for my thinness. It was duly salted, but I could not bring myself to eat it. I never did grow fat in the Gilbert Islands.

The Pathway to Heaven

Kiribati is an island republic in Micronesia, in the Central Pacific, located at the intersection of the Equator and the International Date Line. It was a British colony at the time of World War I, known as the Gilbert Islands, and the governor then was Arthur Grimble, a sensitive, educated man who was very interested in Gilbertese culture and language.

One day Grimble heard that there had been a death in a distant village, and he wanted to go to the funeral, so that he could learn about the local customs connected to such things. But no one would take him there, as they felt it was a very private thing, and not for outsiders. Grimble decided to go by himself, and set off along a little-used path which the natives called "the pathway to heaven".

Along the way he encountered a man he knew slightly, coming from the direction of the village, but although Grimble greeted him by name, the man remained silent, and walked by him without a glance. When he arrived at the village, Grimble mentioned this unusual occurrence, but the only explanation he received was wide-eyed silence. The reason for this strange behavior was made shockingly clear to him shortly. The silent man he had met on the path had died the day before. It had been the deceased, the man whose funeral he had come to attend, taking his final journey.

LESEN SIE: Kiritimati, a christmas visit

lesen Sie: Christmas island. by Bob Thomas:

Christmas Island, 1966

Bob Thomas

I spent 6 months on Christmas Island in 1966 while in the U.S. Air Force. We were there to monitor the French Nuclear testing being done "down South" of us I believe. I was an enlisted communications specialist, so I had no knowledge of the 'big' picture!

I recall only two villages, London and Paris, at the time. Also, there were only about 180 natives on the island. Two of them worked for the Air Force in the Mess hall. The "airport" was a big leaning sheet metal structure. Much like a "lean-to" about 40 feet tall! There were no buildings at the airport. The beach front was lined with structures from previous military ventures. There were a lot of bars and churches as I recall. There were also several huge warehouses filled with a multitude of 'things'. One held coffins! We also found several abandoned airplanes, 100,000 watt Marconi transmitters, jeeps, land cruisers, phone systems, tennis courts and hundreds of tennis balls, cases of pool cues and several pool tables that we re-furbished and used extensively! Our water came from a seepage pit that we bull-dozed in the middle of the island. We moved several water tanks/towers to our installation and built a water truck. It was a flat bed trailer with a water tower tank on it! One guy spent the entire 6 months driving back and forth hauling water and pumping it into the water towers we had built. The installation we stayed at seemed to be about halfway between London and Paris. It was a cluster of military style buildings inside a chain link fence.

We would catch lobster at low tide and have lobster tails for dinner, lobster omelets for breakfast, lobster sandwiches for lunch etc.! None of us knew anything about fishing, but we fished constantly! Usually throwing the catch back in. When we left, we pushed our vehicles into the ocean and set them on fire because the "commissioner" on the island told us to. He didn't want the natives driving them all over the island after we left because none of them knew how to drive! At the time, he told us he was waiting for Japanese salvage ships to come pick up the salvageable material. (he had laid claim to it) and then he would be a "Millionaire"!

When we arrived, we had to unload a cargo ship that was anchored about 2 or 3 miles out. (at least it seemed that far!). We had two landing craft that were left there on the island when we departed. The native ladies all had to wear tee-shirts while we were around (they were topless usually) and the entire 5 or 6 days that we spent unloading the ships, they would raise their shirts and "flash us" every time we came into the dock in London! (Most of us were 18 to 24 years old at the time, and that was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to us)!

We all had to try the coconut milk and coconut fruit at the first opportunity. It was very good because we had been working hard for days.... we later regretted it! I caught my first shark on the island by dangling my flip-flop shoe in the water! He bit onto my shoe, and I kicked him ashore! (That also emptied out the 'swimming hole' at the time!)

We called the two natives that worked for us "Gumjoe" and "Mogum"... because they were always asking us for chewing gum... as in, Gum Joe? or More Gum? They didn't speak English so that was the extent of their conversation!

The most advanced technology on the island while I was there, aside from our communications and "spying" equipment, was the beer cooler. It was a 48 foot refrigerated trailer that held our "life's blood'! We refilled it 4 times in 6 months because it held "only" 3 or 4000 cans of beer! It's hard to imagine that the Air Force would allow an old C-124 cargo plane to fly 6 hours just to deliver beer and mail! That's where I discovered Australian Ales! The commissioner would trade us one Ale for three Budwisers. Then he sold the Bud's to the natives for $1.00 U.S.!

It seems like we (mankind) won't be happy until we've 'scarred' all of the surface of the earth! I don't know it for a fact but, we were told that the island was about several miles longer before the atomic testing was done years ago. Apparently the explosions allowed several miles of island to wash away after the testing.

Of course, we were also told that:

  1. The U.S. had to replant the entire island in coconut trees after the war.
  2. The island was the "laundry" of the Pacific during the war. All uniforms, tents, bedding etc. were sent there to be washed and re-cycled for the Pacific forces!
  3. The commissioner had caught a "Great White Shark" by using the grappling hook on the cable of his jeep when the shark foundered inside the reef at low tide!
  4. The Natives were cannibals on their home islands!
  5. We were an 'alternate site' for the French Nuke testing! ! !
  6. The "land crabs" would come after you in your sleep if you didn't block your door!
  7. If you walked through the bird nesting areas the birds would attack you!
  8. There were "hundreds" of Moray eels in the water! . . . and numerous other lies!

I guess the purpose was to keep us inside the compound in some cases! The rest of the stories were just 'good clean fun' for the story teller!

I loved my stay on Christmas Island and I hope to some day go back for a visit...

 

 

9/28/2004 - Since this story was posted (April 15, 1999), I've been contacted by several folks who have some interest, for what ever reason, in the island. I've supplied photos to a 75-year-old lady who was writing a story about her husband's stay on the island in the 50's, and have remained an email friend with her for several years now.
A scientist contacted me after reading the story to tell me that he had made an emergency landing there during the time period I was there. The weird thing is, I was the radio operator who was "screaming" at he pilot to NOT land because we didn't have enough runway length for him! Turns out, I was wrong! The scientist was one of 18 or 20 on the plane. They were waiting for the French to test their Nuke! They overnighted with us and a repair crew flew down the next day to fix their plane. I've been contacted by several British ex-soldiers who told me of their stay on the island. A couple of my former Air Force members picked up the phone to call me and reminisce about our time there.

 

 

Bob Thomas
1960 Mount Vernon Estates Dr.
Kinston, N.C. 28504
eieio@clis.com

 

 

One of Robin White's Kiribati woodblock prints, "On the beach at Bikenibeu" (1992)

Illustrations from
"The Morning Star:
History of the Children's Missionary Vessel,
and of the Marquesan and Micronesian Missions"
by Mrs. Jane S. Warren
1860

LESEN SIE:

 

Eating Out In Butaritari

by Cleo Paskal

 

How do you say 'no' to food? In many places, it is simply the most important gift imaginable. To refuse it, is to refuse the embodiment of place. It is like going to church but, when communion time comes around, peering suspiciously at the wafer and saying "No thanks, I... uh... just ate". To travel is to taste life and, sometimes, it tastes awful.

I have grinned through gritted teeth while choking down whole garlic cloves laced with pickled octopus tentacles in the Yaeyama Islands. I smilingly pretended the Okinawan raw horse meat I chewed, for what seemed like several weeks, was actually (very) rare roast beef. I graciously plunged my hands up to the wrists in a congealing brownish glop that my Malian host assured me had been, at one time, goat and muttered "yum yum" as I sucked on the sinewy chunk that had snagged my fingernail. You do what has to be done.

However hard it was for me, the giving is, often, more difficult than the receiving. Who knows how many precious chickens were throttled in my name; how many winter stocks I have inadvertently pillaged. Procuring food takes it's toll. Which is why I want to tell you this story. It's not my story, it belongs to Winnie Powell, the indomitable medicine woman of Butaritari Island. It belongs to her and to her island, which isn't really an island but rather an Atoll in the Central Pacific. Butaritari belongs to a country no one has ever heard of called Kiribati. It is a real country and this is a real story.

I only know it because I was sick. I went to visit Winnie and, within 36 hours, was curled up on a pandanus mat, shivering with fever and suffering from what Winnie knowingly called "the flu with a touch of 'epatitis". She mixed me some medicine out of twigs, roots and rain water (which doesn't actually qualify as 'food' so I will pass over them as quickly as they passed through me) and initiated a regime of massages designed to lower my temperature and channel the flu into my stomach. This didn't seem like such a good idea as my stomach seemed to already have its fair share of the flu. Which brings me closer to The Story.

What with my stomach filling up with flu and all, I wasn't very hungry. Winnie insisted I eat and offered me the full range of local dishes: bananas, fish, paw paw, coconut and swamp taro. That was it. The full range. Oh, granted there is a world of difference between roasted swamp taro and grated swamp taro but being deathly ill allows you certain privileges and it gets to the point where you grab those privileges by the throat and scream into their collective face 'NO MORE SWAMP TARO OR I WILL PUKE."

And that was when Winnie told me The Story. It started, as all good stories do, once upon a time, not so very long ago....

The dolphins and the humans lived in separate but equal worlds. The dolphins kept watch over the sea and the humans oversaw the land. There was mutual respect and liking but they rarely got together for a chat. In fact, there were only two families on Butaritari Island who had the knowledge that allowed them to Call The Dolphins.

Calling the dolphins was difficult and dangerous and would only be undertaken in times of hunger. It started when the Caller was asleep. She (or he) would guide her dreams towards the land where dolphins dreams. There, unhindered by physical considerations like incompatible vocal chords, she could speak directly to the dreams of the sleeping dolphins.

The Caller of dolphins was invariably well received. The dolphins loved company. Once introductory pleasantries were over ("Thanks for returning that lost sailor." "No problem, glad to do it. He had a lovely way of caressing my blowhole."), the Caller stated the real reason for the visit. "I have been sent to invite the dolphins to a dance in our lagoon. Can you come?"

That always thrilled the dolphins. They would get excited and the shades of their sub-conscious would glimmer a bit brighter. "Oh Yes! Yes, of course, we would be happy to come. How many of us would you like? Just the big ones or the small ones too? The usual place?". The Caller would say "of course the same place" and add how many were invited and of what age. Then, politely excusing herself, she would quietly fade back into consciousness.

The next day, just before high tide, the whole village would go down to the lagoon and watch the sea channel expectantly. Soon the dolphins would start to arrive. The teenagers and young adults of the village took off their clothes and hung them on The Tree Upon Which You Hang Your Clothes, then they dove into the lagoon and paired off with the dolphins. The humans, gently holding onto their hosts, would murmur sweet nothings into where they imagined dolphin ears to be. As parents and siblings watched from the shore, singing and dancing encouragingly, the human/dolphin couples frolicked in the crystal aquamarine waters. Occasionally, a mischievously adventurous pair would even go out into the darker blue waters of the open sea, returning only hours later.

Eventually, the tide would falter and the time would come to end the dance. The dolphins knew what to do next. One by one, they would beach themselves, always in the same spot and always facing the same direction. The swimmers quietly got their clothes from The Tree and stood watching. Emotions crackled in the air. Sorrow, pain, gratitude, love and, darting about like an embarrassed streaker, hunger.

Some of the stronger men picked up the hatchets that had been lying on the cool grass since the morning and, caressing the lean and still wet dolphins with one hand, hacked them to death with the other. As soon as they beached, they were butchered. The meat was quickly and equitably distributed all throughout the island.

Every one got a piece. Everyone except the Caller of dolphins. She had known the dolphins as friends, she had spoken with them. It would be unacceptable for her to eat them.

There was also another price she would be expected to pay. The Caller of the dolphins always died young and, when she died, she could not be buried on the island. Just off the coast of Butaritari there was a dark blot on the turquoise ocean, a bottomless hole in the sea floor that, it was believed, led down into the home of the dolphins. The body of the Caller of the dolphins was brought to this spot and placed in the water. Other bodies would have just floated away , but hers sunk, down, down, reuniting her again and forever with the dolphins, who were always happy to have company. And that sacrifice, dying young, forever being separated from her family, the Caller of the dolphins was willing to make for the honour of being able to provide food for her hungry Island.

And that was the end of Winnie's story.

She looked rather pointedly at the now cold dish of roasted Swamp Taro.

"Boy," I said, "that swamp taro sure looks delicious." Brushing away the flies that weren't already imbedded and struggling in the beige mass, I started munching away dutifully. "Yum yum."

"But Winnie, is that true? Do they still Call the dolphins?"

"The last time the dolphins were Called was about thirty years ago. I had just had my first child so I couldn't swim with them. I watched though... You know, my husband's family is one of the two who can Call. I ask my sister-in-law why she won't do it. She says she doesn't want to die young. I told her it's too late anyway since she is already in her sixties but she still won't do it. I guess she prefers the safer honour of buying the whole island tins of corned beef."

Youth today -- don't know the value of a good meal.

 

 

From: Food: A Taste of the Road; Edited by Richard Sterling; Traveler' Tales; San Francisco; 1996. Copyright Cleo Paskal, 1996. Reproduction in any medium forbidden without consent of the author who can be reached at cleo@paskal.ca and who is much nicer than this stern note implies.

LESEN SIE:

 

The Pathway to Heaven

Stephen Trussel

Kiribati is an island republic in Micronesia, in the Central Pacific, located at the intersection of the Equator and the International Date Line. It was a British colony at the time of World War I, known as the Gilbert Islands, and the governor then was Arthur Grimble, a sensitive, educated man who was very interested in Gilbertese culture and language.

One day Grimble heard that there had been a death in a distant village, and he wanted to go to the funeral, so that he could learn about the local customs connected to such things. But no one would take him there, as they felt it was a very private thing, and not for outsiders. Grimble decided to go by himself, and set off along a little-used path which the natives called "the pathway to heaven".

Along the way he encountered a man he knew slightly, coming from the direction of the village, but although Grimble greeted him by name, the man remained silent, and walked by him without a glance. When he arrived at the village, Grimble mentioned this unusual occurrence, but the only explanation he received was wide-eyed silence. The reason for this strange behavior was made shockingly clear to him shortly. The silent man he had met on the path had died the day before. It had been the deceased, the man whose funeral he had come to attend, taking his final journey.

LESEN SIE:

The Japan Times
June 27, 1999

U.N. entry of Kiribati, Nauru OK'd

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) The U.N. Security Council endorsed U.N. membership for the tiny Pacific island nations of Kiribati and Nauru on Friday. China, unhappy about Nauru's diplomatic relations with Taiwan, abstained on its application.

When formally admitted by the General Assembly - probably in July - the two nations will raise the number of U.N. members to 187.

Alluding to Nauru's links with Taiwan, Chinese deputy U.N. representative Shen Guofang said he could not support the council's recommendation to the General Assembly for Nauru to be admitted to the world body.

"At the same time, considering the long-term interests of the peoples of China and Nauru, and considering the request of South Pacific countries, we will not block this recommendation," he said.

Kiribati's membership application was endorsed by the council without a vote

LESEN SIE:

The Japan Times, September 17, 1998

LITTLE ISLAND WITH BIG FUTURE

Christmas cleared for spaceport

Japan has agreed with the Republic of Kiribati to build a Japanese spaceport on Christmas Island, according to sources from the National Space Development Agency of Japan.
NASDA will build the spaceport on a peninsula on the mid-Pacific island, which will be lent to NASDA free of charge for 20 years, the sources said.
NASDA will sign an agreement with the Kiribati government before the end of the year to formalize the deal, they said.
The planned spaceport initially will serve as a landing field for HOPE-X, Japan's test space shuttle now under development, and HOPE, its unmanned space shuttle, but it may be used later for launching shuttles and rockets, the sources said.
The spaceport will be built on the 200-sq.-km uninhabited peninsula, which has a 2,000-meter-long runway built by Britain during the 1950s to fly in instruments for nuclear tests. Britain and the United States conducted nuclear tests on Christmas Island between 1956 and 1963.
Construction of the spaceport will mark the first time Japan has used foreign soil for space development purposes, the sources said.
Under the proposed agreement, NASDA will hold the exclusive rights to the runway, which will be used for landing HOPE-X and HOPE, they said.
NASDA will develop the basic infrastructure needed for the spaceport, such as roads and facilities for water and electricity, the sources said.
NASDA will also repair the runway and take responsibility for preserving the environment, they said.
In the future, research and development of reusable rockets may be relocated to the spaceport from NASDA's Tanegashima Space Center in Kyushu after Japan's first commercial rocket-launching services begin at the space center in 2000, the sources said.
NASDA first considered areas inside Japan for the landing field but chose Christmas Island because of its geographic and climatic advantages, and also because NASDA has a rocket and satellite tracking station there, the sources said.
The candidates in Japan - including Magejima Island in Kagoshima Prefecture as well as Tono and Kamaishi in Iwate Prefecture, were ruled out due to overcrowded airspace and the necessity for space shuttles to fly over China and the Korean Peninsula to land, the sources said
NASDA and the Kiribati government agreed on the deal after three years of negotiations.
Kiribati is a republic consisting of 33 coral islands located around the equator in the mid-Pacific, with a combined size almost equal to that of Japan's Sado island.
The former British colony declared independence in 1979. It was briefly occupied by Japanese forces during World War II.

CHRISTMAS ISLAND , Kiribatl - Local residents use a net to haul in a catch. The National Space Development Agency of Japan plans to build a spaceport here that initially will serve as a landing field for space shuttles and later may be used to launch space shuttles and rockets. KYODO PHOTO

East-West Magazine, Fall/Winter 1986 article:

Kiritimati: A Christmas Visit

Stephen Trussel

    Friday, October 10. This morning I went to London and met Eritaia, the Acting Secretary. He was at his desk, within earshot of the radio room. He was happy for a chance to speak English, and we got along well. As I'd been looking forward to going down to Paris, I asked him about it. "Oh, there's no longer anyone in Paris," he replied matter-of-factly, "they've all been moved to Poland to consolidate the labor force."

    We broke out laughing - The juxtaposition of those grand European names with the tiny Kiribati villages we were speaking of was jarring. The effect was heightened by Eritaia's clear British pronunciation. Had he been speaking Gilbertese, his mother tongue, he would have said Boran for Poland, and it wouldn't have been as noticeable. "Yes," he chuckled, "sometimes it comes out funny when we talk about London or Paris."

    When I'd studied the Christmas Island map before my arrival, I hadn't suspected that those would really be the names of Kiribati villages. I'd read that some 75 years earlier, those sites had been Christened by a French ex-priest, who'd leased the island for a plantation, and named them after the Europe he missed. Much of Christmas history is tied to British and American commercial and military ventures, but since 1979, when the British Gilbert Islands Colony became independent as Kiribati (the native spelling of Gilberts), Christmas has been a part of that nation. Now London is the administrative center for the 'eastern provinces', the Line & Phoenix District, closer to Honolulu than to the capital on Tarawa, 2000 miles to the west.

    I thought of names like Bikenibeu and Teaoraereke, villages where I'd spent my days on Tarawa, seven years ago, of islands that didn't sound at all like "Christmas": Abemama, Tabiteuea, Butaritari. During my stay on Christmas, I was continually being transported to those places, those times. I mentioned them often to people who wanted to know how I came to speak their language, where I had been, and who I knew, people who wanted to know why I was there. It was a reunion with an old love, a chance to speak Gilbertese, to live for a short while again in a place I'd never wanted to leave.

    The one scheduled flight a week to Christmas leaves Honolulu on Wednesday morning at 5:30. It's not the busy season yet for sport fishermen, when sometimes two dozen or more make the flight. Today there are none. Among the half dozen or so passengers on the 737 are a young Gilbertese seaman who'd had an operation in Honolulu, and a couple of FAA inspectors making the round trip. It's like a private charter. Within three hours the island appears below, larger than it should be, much larger than any Kiribati atoll I had seen, with broad sand flats and eerily multi-colored ponds.

    The sudden brightness assails my eyes, but soon I can focus on familiar vehicles, the stuff of airfields everywhere. 'Christmas' has become KIRITIMATI, and the first strains of the language start to drift across the runway. Snatches of a greeting, "Ko na mauri! Ko uara?", and Gilbertese words begin to flow in my mind. Once, arriving in Tarawa during Independence, our Air Nauru jet had been greeted by rows of dancers in traditional costumes. They'd been expecting Nauru's president, but performed enthusiastically. Now, in the heat of the Equatorial sun, there is not much hurried movement. Our passports are stamped "Republic of Kiribati, Xmas Airfield". We've entered, passed from the brilliant glare of the field into the pale green of a bare, sunlit, screened-in room, through customs, where bags receive a cursory inspection on the painted wooden counter, by officers who once a week wear their uniforms and speak English. There are no baggage carousels, no metal detectors. Everyone moves as though the atmosphere were slightly denser. Only two I-Matang, two foreigners are arriving, Americans, a writer and photographer for a magazine, boosting the non-Gilbertese population to 5, gently nudging the island total closer to 1800.

    I asked Eritaia how he liked to living on Christmas, where he'd been for the past two or three years, after coming from the capital. "Tarawa has almost half of the country's 65,000 or so people right now, in a very small area, less than 10 sq. miles of land spread along 22 miles of reef. When I received the workers' complaints or comments, it was usually by mail. We were always very busy, and couldn't go and talk with them, so I had to respond 'by the book', I couldn't be so flexible. Here I can go out and talk directly with the copra workers, discuss their problems with them and hopefully find a solution together. I like that much better, but it's also hard work." He paused and considered, "and the life here is good, it's not crowded and there's plenty of fish. Of course I can only go fishing on weekends," he grinned. "That's the price you pay for having an office job. Even the president has to fight to find time to get away fishing on the weekend."

    Christmas Airfield is the "American" doorway to Kiritimati, for another fisherman, the sportsman lured by dreams of trophy bone-fish caught on lightweight fly tackle. Entering through this port, he finds a world with a steady supply of 110v power, air-conditioning, tile bathrooms and hot showers. This is the Captain Cook Hotel, there's ice-water in the fridge, and steak and ice cream are on the dinner menu, a gift shop with post cards. In the world of the hotel, all the Gilbertese speak to him in English, the waiters and cleaning women, maintenance men and fishing guides.

    The head fishing guide, Eddie, had driven us over from the airfield in a small van. At 6'6", 280 pounds, he grinned down at us as we sat together in the hotel dining room, the bright white table cloths reflecting the circling ceiling fans overhead. He seemed older than his 26 years, with the gentle ways some huge men have. "You guys like to fish?" he asked, eyes twinkling. He seemed a little unhappy at our answer. "For me, if I did nothing else I'd be happy as could be. I don't care what kind of fishing, I like to do all kinds, to learn new kinds." Eddie finished a plate which had just been piled high with fish and rice. He shrugged and accepted more. "Broke da mout!" he laughed. Eddie's been to Hawaii. "I was born here on Christmas," he told us, "so that makes me one of the old timers. But my father, Eberi, was here before me," he grinned, "he's been here longer than anyone." Eberi's house was in London, a half hour's drive from the hotel by pickup.

    Taunga, another guide, was the driver. He was 22, also over six feet, friendly and handsome. He had entered Christmas just a few years earlier, through the Kiribati door, the Moana Raoi, the Gilbertese merchant vessel which comes four times a year from Tarawa, 2,000 miles to the west. "My brothers have been all over the world," he told us. "They went to the Marine Training School on Tarawa and became seamen. I've been to Honolulu and Santa Rosa and Boulder, Colorado." He displayed a beautiful snow leopard creeping through bamboo, tattooed on his broad, tan, forearm. "I got this in Santa Rosa, a souvenir of my friend, a guy I met when he came down here fishing. Next time, when I go back, he'll add the colors." His attention returned to the road.

    The road, smooth and beautiful, is a fine two-lane highway with no traffic, no signs, just the faintest trace of what was once a painted stripe down the middle. Salt bush lines the sides, low shrubs up to the nearby palms. Scenery changes slowly. After a while we pass through a broad plain of open fields with coconut trees far off in the distance. It seems like we must be somewhere in Africa, and I wait for an elephant to appear. "There was a big fire here a few years ago," Taunga explains, "and all the trees burned. A little child left alone near a cooking fire started it, but he wasn't hurt." We pass the Japanese satellite tracking station on the ocean side, giant white dish antennas gleaming like alien visitors against the fronds and the deep blue sky. "They have four generators," he says, "and it's all automatic. When one goes off the next one comes on. They have their own fuel supply. Right now there's just a couple of guys there. No Japanese, two Australians. There's one Gilbertese guy that takes care of the generators."

    We drive past row after row of coconut trees now, many with red or yellow leaves, beautiful in their thirst. The road disappears into the horizon. Taunga, still thinking of the tracking station, continues, "but they have the best power on the whole island. Most villages have generators, but they only run a couple of hours at night, 240v power. In Banana, the village near the airport, their generator's been out for 3 months, waiting for a part. It doesn't matter. People do pretty much the same with or without electricity." He answers the unspoken question, "oh yes, they grow some bananas, but the name comes from the American military camp that was there."

    Eritaia had been very concerned about the idea of progress as it applied to Kiribati, the influence of outside things. "You know, today, most everyone eats rice, imported. People don't eat as much bwabwai now, the local taro. It takes much more time to prepare, and so cooking rice frees the women's time up. But what is it they do with their free time? If they just sit around and play cards, I'm not sure I'd want to call that progress." He thought for a while. "And how about living in these houses with walls and rooms. A walk down a Gilbertese lane is a social event, everyone can see you and you can see everyone. Walls are for privacy, an idea that's almost unknown here."

    We come to a mwaneaba on the lagoon side, a Gilbertese meeting house, where people spend much of their time together. This one is large, perhaps 100 feet long, 30 feet high. The roof is of corrugated aluminum, reaching down so low you have to stoop to enter. No walls, the main posts of concrete. Low native huts fan out from it towards the lagoon. Taunga confirms my thoughts. "On most islands, that would have a roof of pandanus thatch, and all the wooden posts would be lashed together with coconut cord. The big supports, slabs of coral rock. But here on Christmas there's hardly any pandanus, and things are built with the imported materials." He nods towards the mwaneaba, "That's the new settlement, Te Riiti. It means 'the Lease'. No one owns land on Christmas yet. Once they do, they'll have to give up their land on the island they come from. That's the Protestant mwaneaba, the next one's the Catholic. Most people are Protestant or Catholic, but I follow the Baha'i faith."

    We round the bend, passing a duplicate mwaneaba, and soon we are in London, nestled like Te Riiti among the coconut palms, a village of 600 or so, mostly neat rows of military huts, with straight dirt lanes, tapering off into less and less neat rows, curving lanes which blend into the Kiribati landscape. At Eberi's house we pull in next to a thatched cook house adjacent to the main building, a small lean-to, where some older women sit with a young woman and her baby. Everything in the village has a kind of helter-skelter appearance - things seem to have been left lying in mid course, like a permanent camp ground.

    Eberi was inside, sitting on a low wooden platform. Even with flat walls and mesh windows the Gilbertese flavor prevails in the house. We sit on woven pandanus mats spread on the platform; mosquito nets stored above the rafters show that it will be a sleeping place at night. "I first came here in 1957 or '58, as a copra cutter," Eberi told us. Distinguished looking, six and a half feet tall like Eddie, he was thoughtful and softspoken. "That's the way it was with most of us who came to the islands outside of the main group, and even today. You can't just go there to live, you go to work on the coconut plantations, temporary. Now Christmas is open to settlement by anyone, but when I came, there was only the military and the copra workers and their families."

    From 1941 to 1948, American troops occupied the island, and the copra cutters helped them build the airfield. 2500 men were stationed there during the peak time. Christmas was never a battle zone like Tarawa, but remnants of the occupation are everywhere, rusting hulks of tank trucks and generators among the palms. Heaps of metal scrap provide landmarks in the sameness of the view from the road.

    "It was around the time that the British and the Americans were doing their H-bomb tests, in 1956 and 1957, and again in 1962, 3500 troops," Eberi continued. "They set them off over the ocean, maybe 35 miles away, and the first few times they took us off the island on ships, and had us cover our eyes with our hands, real tight so we wouldn't see the flash. But after that it became more normal, and though they asked us if we wanted to go on the ships, most people didn't. Some years later people came here to test if there was any danger, but they found that everything was okay. I'm not sure if it's true or not."

    When Cook found the island on Christmas Eve in 1777, he reported that there was "an abundance of birds and fish, but no visible means of allaying thirst, nor any vegetable that could supply the place of bread..." There seems an even greater abundance today, coconuts proliferate, fishing is said to be the best in Kiribati, sanctuary islands are set aside for innumerable roosting seabirds. One day on the southern end of the island we saw the sky filled black with circling terns, shrieking their annual mating ritual, while not far below flocks of boobies were nesting, guarding their eggs.

    "Whenever they tested their bomb, millions of birds died, Eberi continued. "They didn't know to turn away from the flash and close their eyes, so they were blinded. But after six months or so, they'd be back again." Eberi stopped to work on his cigarette, and my thoughts drifted to another unimwaane, another elder of the community, also talking Gilbertese, also working on a cigarette, on Tarawa, years ago.

    His name was Eneri, almost like Eberi. Yet Eneri is for 'Henry', Eberi for 'April'. Eneri too was tall and strong, and had patiently struggled with my Gilbertese language while trying to teach me about Gilbertese life. We'd lived in the village of Teaoraereke, in a small complex of huts surrounding a small concrete block house, with a corrugated metal roof. A lean-to for cooking, another for storage, one for sleeping and day use. A large tank to collect the rainwater from the roof. There were always groups of people around, but Eneri and his wife, their two daughters, son-in-law, and three grandchildren were the chief residents during my stay. The house belonged to the son-in-law's sister, and her American husband, my friends in Honolulu. Their children had often been my Gilbertese teachers in Hawaii.

    I spent my days with Eneri, who missed the peaceful life of his home island far to the south. "On Arorae, on the outer islands, it's not so crowded, and people live more in the traditional way," he explained. "They don't go to work like on Tarawa, where there are offices and shops." Eneri usually rose with the tide, carried his one-man canoe to the shore and set off to fish alone. His wife might be outside cooking the catch before I awoke, and Eneri would descend from a coconut tree, coconut bottles filled with te karewe, coconut toddy, dangling from their cords. We spend most of the day lying around on the pandanus mats, talking, eating, brushing away flies with woven pandanus fans. "People on Tarawa have money, life is different," he'd say, "people buy fish instead of catching it - they don't have time." We have time, and days pass lazily, calendars and watches losing significance...

    Eberi's voice cut into my thoughts as he echoed Eneri's ideas.. "People on Christmas have jobs, money, life is different, more things are bought." He offered me the cigarette. I had expected te rauara, a long smoke of sweet black tobacco rolled in pandanus leaf 'paper', which Eneri had taught me to make. This one was the same length but rolled in two white cigarette papers. I asked why, and Eberi explained that "on Kiritimati there aren't so many pandanus trees, maybe because there's not enough water. Would you like to drink some karewe?"

    He called through the doorway to one of the women in the lean-to, and after a while we were sipping the sweet coconut sap from blue and red plastic cups, like the tops of thermos bottles. A rural silence permeated the room, the murmur of the women's voices, distant children's laughter, the crowing of a rooster muffled by the trees. Through the coarse metal screening of the window a small motorbike could be seen, parts lying nearby, some repair temporarily suspended. Tiny piglets played with kittens among the remnants of afternoon fish.

    Eberi was temporarily housebound as he was suffering from gout and his joints were swollen and painful. "I just got this medicine which came over on the plane from Honolulu," he said, holding up the vial of capsules." He extended his leg and displayed his puffed ankle. "On this one someone came and practiced a little local medicine," pointing to the small row of marks. "Those are cigarette burns. This guy came who knew about that kind of thing, and he just held it close to the skin until it hurt, and then he moved it away. I'll see which one gets better first," he laughed, and applied his own cigarette tip to a spot, but he pulled it away quickly, laughing again.

    Local medicine, the stories of miracle cures I had heard and read buzzed in my head. I asked Eritaia it Friday. "Oh, there's no question about it," he answered. "I know a man who was run through with a kind of pitchfork in his chest. A doctor came, but he said there was nothing he could do, there was no surgery and the internal injuries were too bad: the man had no chance. Someone who knew the local medicine was called, a famous man, and he stayed with the patient, pressing on his wounds and talking to him. Eventually the bleeding stopped and the man got well. You can see the scars on his chest today. It doesn't always work, of course, but there are no doctors in most places, and there's always someone falling from a coconut tree and breaking some bones, and these people can set them."

    I said it sounded like stories I'd heard, of Gilbertese magic and ghosts, and Eritaia responded, "well, there's magic, perhaps real magic, which very few people know today, but there's also what we call 'the way', te kawai, and that's something everyone knows about. For example, if you wanted a girl to fall in love with you, you would follow te kawai. It might go something like this: walk 33 paces directly south from your door just at sunset, holding your breath. When you reach a certain tree, circle it three times to the left, and then take three blossoms. Return in the same number of paces, and let out your breath. Then she'll love you."

    Outside Eritaia's office, magical trees swayed along the road, along te kawai. I walked with Taunga over to the boboti, the government Co-op buildings nearby. We were always in view of the waterfront, and we passed in front of workshops for carpentry and engines, stopping at each door for a small conversation. We reached the Co-op and met Robati, Robert, the director. "Hi Mr. Boboti-man," said Taunga jokingly to the older man. Robert showed us through stacks of rice and flour from Australia, sugar from Fiji, tinned salmon and corned beef, the staples and not-so-staples of a Gilbertese store. "I've been enjoying my work here." he said, "we've been building things up over the past few years, learning to run it as a business. I'm interested in hearing how you do it in Hawaii, in America, how can we improve things." He walked us over to a small, adjacent screened-in room with a table down the center and half a dozen chairs on each side. "This is the 'cafeteria'," he explained. "It's a new idea I had and it's been popular. Guys on a break from work can come over and get a cup of coffee or a plate lunch. We're doing quite well with it." We sat down and a woman smiled and brought over some cups of coffee, sweet and milky. Taunga was hungry and had a plate of rice and fish stew, 80 cents Australian. "Outside of the hotel, this is the only 'restaurant' on the island, " Robert was explaining. "There are a couple of them on Tarawa, but almost no where else in the country. 'Eating out' has no meaning in Kiribati. People are usually at home. Only where people work, here, or in Tarawa, can people find a use for this kind of thing." We finished our coffee, while outside the magical trees continued to sway.

    Later, driving back. I asked Taunga about what Eritaia had told me earlier, about te kawai. "I went to a friend of mine to get a charm like that once," he said, "but she told me it wasn't necessary for me, all I had to do was to go over and talk to the girl!" We laughed, and spoke of the mysteries of love, speaking candidly, trading stories of the things that mattered most.

LESEN SIE:

 

THE CALLING OF THE PORPOISE

by Sir Arthur Grimble
from Chapter 6, "Strange Interlude" of
"A Pattern of Islands," London, John Murray, 1952

 It was common rumour in the Gilbert Islands that certain local clans had the power of porpoise-calling; but it was rather like the Indian rope-trick; you never met anyone who had actually witnessed the thing. If I had been a reasonably plump young man, I might never have come to see what I did see on the beach of Butaritari lagoon. But I was skinny. it was out of sheer pity for my poor thin frame that old Kitiona set his family porpoise-caller working. We were sitting together one evening in his canoe-shed by the beach, and he was delivering a kind of discourse on the beauty of human fatness.
 "A chief of chiefs," he said, "is recognized by his shape. He is fleshy from head to foot. But his greatest flesh is his middle; when he sits, he is based like a mountain upon his sitting place; when he stands, he swells out in the midst, before and behind, like a porpoise." it seemed that in order to maintain that noble bulge a high chief simply must have a regular diet of porpoise-meat; if he didn't, he would soon become lean and bony like a commoner or a white man. The white man was doubtless of chiefly race, thought Kitiona, but his figure could hardly be called beautiful. "And you," he added, looking me up and down with affectionate realism, "are in truth the skinniest white man ever seen in these islands. You sit upon approximately no base at all."
 I laughed (heartily, I hope) and asked what he thought could be done about that. "You should eat porpoise-flesh," he said simply, "then you too would swell in the proper places." That led me to inquire how I might come by a regular supply of the rare meat. The long and the short of his reply was that his own kinsmen in Kuma village, seventeen miles up-lagoon. were the hereditary porpoise-callers of the High Chiefs of Butaritari and Makin-Meang. His first cousin was a leading expert at the game; he could put himself into the right kind of dream on demand. His spirit went out of his body in such a dream; it sought out the porpoise-folk in their home under the western horizon and invited them to a dance, with feasting, in Kuma village. If he spoke the words of the invitation aright (and very few had the secret of them) the porpoise would follow him with cries of joy to the surface.
 Having led them to the lagoon entrance, He would fly forward to rejoin his body and warn the people of their coming. It was quite easy for one who knew the way of it. The porpoise never failed to arrive. Would I like some called for me? After some rather idle shilly-shallying, I admitted that I would; but did he think I should be allowed to see them coming? Yes, he replied, that could probably be arranged. He would talk to his kinsman about it. Let me choose a date for the calling and, if the Kuma folk agreed, his canoe would take me to the village. We fixed on a day early in January, some weeks ahead, before I left him.
 No further word came from Kitiona until his big canoe arrived one morning to collect me. There was not a breath of wind, so sailing was out of the question. The sun was white-hot. it took over six hours of grim paddling to reach our destination. By the time we got there, I was cooked like a prawn and wrapped in gloom. When the fat, friendly man who styled himself the High Chief's hereditary porpoise-caller came waddling down the beach to greet me, I asked irritably when the porpoise would arrive. He said he would have to go into his dream first, but thought he could have them there for me by three or four o'clock. Please, though, he added firmly, would I be careful to call them, from now on, only "our friends from the west". The other name was tabu. They might not come at all if I said it aloud. He led me as he spoke to a little hut screened with newly plaited coconut leaves, which stood beside his ordinary dwelling. Alone in there, he explained, he would do his part of the business. Would I honour his house by resting in it while he dreamed? "Wait in peace now," he said when I was installed, "I go on my journey', and disappeared into the screened hut.
 Kuma was a big village in those days: its houses stretched for half a mile or more above the lagoon beach. The dreamer's hut lay somewhere near the centre of the line. The place was dead quiet that afternoon under its swooning palms. The children had been gathered in under the thatches. The women were absorbed in plaiting garlands and wreaths of flowers. The men were silently polishing their ceremonial ornaments of shell. Their friends from the west were being invited to a dance, and everything they did in the village that day was done to maintain the illusion.
 Even the makings of a feast lay ready piled in baskets beside the houses. I could not bring myself to believe that the people expected just nothing to come of all this careful business.
 But the hot hours dragged by, and nothing happened. Four o'clock passed. My faith was beginning to sag under the strain when a strangled howl burst from the dreamer's hut. I jumped round to see his cumbrous body come hurtling head first through the tom screens. He sprawled on his face, struggled up, and staggered into the open, a slobber of saliva shining on his chin. He stood awhile clawing at the air and whining on a queer high note like a puppy's. Then words came gulping out of him:
 "Teirakel Teirake! (Arise! Arise!)... They come, they come! . . Our friends from the west... They come! ... Let us go down and greet them." He started at a lumbering gallop down the beach.
 A roar went up from the village, "They come, they come!" I found myself rushing helter-skelter with a thousand others into the shallows, bawling at the top of my voice that our friends from the west were coming. I ran behind the dreamer; the rest converged on him from north and south. We strung ourselves out, line abreast, as we stormed through the shallows. Everyone was wearing the garlands woven that afternoon. The farther out we got, the less the clamour grew. When we stopped, breast deep, fifty yards from the reef's edge, a deep silence was upon us; and so we waited.
 I had just dipped my head to cool it when a man near me yelped and stood pointing; others took up his cry, but I could make out nothing for myself at first in the splintering glare of the sun on the water. When at last I did see them, everyone was screaming hard; they were pretty near by then, gambolling towards us at a fine clip. When they came to the edge of the blue water by the reef, they slackened speed, spread themselves out and started cruising back and forth in front of our line. Then, suddenly, there was no more of them.
 In the strained silence that followed, I thought they were gone. The disappointment was so sharp, I did not stop to think then that, even so, I had seen a very strange thing. I was in the act of touching the dreamer's shoulder to take my leave when he turned his still face to me: "The king out of the west comes to meet me," he murmured, pointing downwards. My eyes followed his hand. There, not ten yards away, was the great shape of a porpoise poised like a glimmering shadow in the glass-green water. Behind it followed a whole dusky flotilla of them.
 They were moving towards us in extended order with spaces of two or three yards between them, as far as my eye could reach. So slowly they came, they seemed to be hung in a trance. Their leader drifted in hard by the dreamer's legs. He turned without a word to walk beside it as it idled towards the shallows. I followed a foot or two behind its almost motionless tail. I saw other groups to right and left of us turn shorewards one by one, arms lifted, faces bent upon the water.
 A babble of quiet talk sprang up; I dropped behind to take in the whole scene. The villagers were welcoming their guests ashore with crooning words. Only men were walking beside them; the women and children followed in their wake, clapping their hands softly in the rhythm of a dance. As we approached the emerald shallows, the keels of the creatures began to take the sand; they flapped gently as if asking for help. The men leaned down to throw their arms around the great barrels and ease them over the ridges. They showed no least sign of alarm. It was as if their single wish was to get to the beach.
 When the water stood only thigh deep, the dreamer flung his arms high and called. Men from either flank came crowding in to surround the visitors, ten or more to each beast. Then, "Lift!" shouted the dreamer, and the ponderous black shapes were half-dragged, half-carried, unresisting, to the lip of the tide. There they settled down, those beautiful, dignified shapes, utterly at peace, while all hell broke loose around them. Men, women and children, leaping and posturing with shrieks that tore the sky, stripped off their garlands and flung them around the still bodies, in a sudden dreadful fury of boastfulness and derision. My mind still shrinks from that last scene--the raving humans, the beasts so triumphantly at rest.
 We left them garlanded where they lay and returned to our houses. Later, when the falling tide had stranded them high and dry, men went down with knives to cut them up. There was feasting and dancing in Kuma that night. A chief's portion of the meat was set aside for me. I was expected to have it cured as a diet for my thinness. It was duly salted, but I could not bring myself to eat it. I never did grow fat in the Gilbert Islands.