to the eight unspoiled

Journey of discovery to the eight unspoiled islands of Tuvalu

Not long ago I spent four weeks in Tuvalu on a research trip to gather data on the growth and nutrition of Pacific Island schoolchildren, as compared with Australian. Put briefly, it was found that Tuvaluan chil dren are sturdier and better nourished than many of their counterparts in parts of

Polynesia which have adopted

a more Western way of life.

Tuvalu was chosen for the study because, among other things, its lifestyle is still quite traditional, and only the main island of Funafuti is moder nised to any extent.

Though I spent only a short time in the ‘colony’, as some older locals still refer to their

islands (although they became

independent on October 1, 1978), I had the good fortune to get on the inter-island ship and visit all eight islands, including those most remote from Funafuti, and hence the outside world. Through

associating nearly exclusively

with the locals, and gaining conversational ability in their language (made possible by previous knowledge of other Polynesian dialects), I was able to gain more insight into the Tuvaluan way of life at the dawn of their nationhood than would normally have been possible in the time I had there.

The Tuvaluan language is a western Polynesian dialect very similar to that spoken in Samoa, the Tokelaus and Wallis Island, and mutually understood by people from these places. The linguistic af finity, as well as the similarity in material culture between Tuvalu and Samoa, originates in the traditional Polynesian navigations, as all these places were settled at roughly the

same time by people from a common culture.

Funafuti, the main island, is like most of the others, made up of a circle of coral islets around a deep lagoon. The islets, only one of which is per manently inhabited, are sur rounded by fringing reefs, and both lagoon and sea are inde scribably rich in fish and other sea life. Being the only one of the islands with a more or less European way of life, Funafuti has about a dozen cars, newish weatherboard houses, a tumbledown cinema, shops, and a small hotel that is the centre of the European com munity’s social life.

There were fewer than 20 palangis (whites) in Funafuti at the time of my visit (this year there are a few more), all of whom are there to do certain jobs on a short-term basis, and consequently there are fewer of the colourful ‘beachcomber’ types who have made per manent homes for themselves

on other Pacific islands. Except for the island of Vaitupu, which has some British volun teer teachers and agricultural experts, none of the other islands has white residents.

Most of the buildings in Funafuti were swept away in a cyclone in 1972 another fac tor which accounts for the rela tively new houses there.

The Hotel, Vaiaku Langi , is the only one in the country, with nightly accommodation fees from $7.50 to $l4 (all prices in Australian currency, which is used on Tuvalu Tuvalu has its own coins, but Australian notes are used).

Often the hotel may be empty for several weeks due to the scarcity of visitors. But the bar the only licensed premises in Tuvalu always does a good trade from local customers.

All the other islands in the group follow a traditional life style, more so in fact than any other island nation in Polynesia. The cultural simi

larity with Samoa is noticeable

everywhere, the exception

being the island of Nui, which was settled by Gilbert Islanders. The language of Nui is a Gilbertese dialect unlike Tuvaluan, and other minor dif ferences show up in things like canoe construction.

Houses are generally made of wooden beams tied together with sennit (coconut rope), with roofs of thatched palm leaves and open walls where mats are lowered at night and in rainy weather. Floors are covered with coral pebbles and mats of woven coconut and

pandanus leaves. Furnishings

usually consist of a few old trunks and chests, with a wire mesh meat safe in one corner.

These days, battery-operated

cassette recorders are becom ing common in many house holds. Most houses have a small ‘bath-house’, a square enclosure of shoulder-high screens of coconut leaves.

Canoes are of the hollowed out log type with one outrigger, tied together with sennit, or,

more commonly, nylon fishing

line, and propelled by paddles

or a triangular sail. They glide

smoothly and rapidly over the mirror-calm lagoon. The cus tom persists of burying the dead in coffins made from sec tions of an old canoe hull, ap-

Pandanus-covered canoes on the beach at Vaitupu.

parently a remnant of the pre-Christian practice of letting a dead man drift out to sea in his canoe.

With very few salaried jobs available, most people live by subsistence agriculture and fishing. Fishing is done with traps, steel hooks and nylon line in both sea and lagoon.

However, for the bonito, special hooks made of the traditional pearlshell and tortoiseshell are used almost exclusively. These hooks are

greatly valued.

Every island has its small

complex of public buildings;

church, maneapa (meeting house), primary school, store, guest house and government office - the latter serving also as police office, radio hut and district agent s office which is decorated with faded

portraits of the Royal family.

The government-owned guest house is more often than not empty, visitors being a rarity. A

nominal nightly charge from

sl-$5 is made, depending on the facilities. The maneapa is

an important Tuvaluan insti tution, being the scene of all

public meetings, weddings and

funeral receptions, parties and dances. The fateh is the Tuvaluan counterpart of the

hula, being performed by girls

in grass or cotton print skirts, with elders singing and beating out the rhythm on the floor of the maneapa.

The church is usually the most impressive building in the village, made of white coral limestone and often dating back t 0 the arrival of the first missionaries (LMS) in the 1860 s and’7os. The pastor is an important man in the corn munity, and the Sunday taboo on work, sport, or fishing is up held more strictly in Tuvalu than in the larger and increasingly secular countries 0 f the Pacific. Sunday services are given in Tuvaluan with em phasis on the hymn-singing so beloved of the Polynesians, Men and women sit in opposite halves of the church, either on ancient pews or pandanus mats.

Food is necessarily of a lim ited variety on a coral atoll, the staples being taro, pulaka (a larger, starchier form of taro), coconuts and fish. The latter is the main source of protein and often eaten raw, in which state it is considered a great delicacy.

Pork and chicken are eaten too, and recently tinned beef imported from Australia or New Zealand is being con

sumed in increasing quantities.

The only other crops that will grow in the poor, sandy soil are breadfruit, bananas, and sugar cane. These crops must often

be tended in specially dug pits

filled with fermenting veg etable matter to provide mini mal nutrition for their growth.

Fresh water is scarce, obtain able only from rain or from brackish wells dug in the sand.

There are no fresh water

springs, streams, or pools.

Toddy’, the national drink of Tuvalu, is made by cutting the sap-bearing stalks of a coconut

palm and collecting the juice

via a leaf-gutter in an empty coconut shell. Fermented, or ‘sour toddy’, is a favourite in toxicating drink. Toddy is also boiled until it becomes a thick, sweet syrup, eaten with other foods.

The trade store on most islands usually carries a few items of imported food, com monly tinned beef or fish, rice, sugar, tea, and flour. The store also sells other essentials like kerosene (for lamps), tobacco, fishing gear, T-shirts, etc.

The Tuvaluan economy is

heavily dependent on outside

development aid, chiefly from

Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The only other sources of revenue at present are Tuvaluans working over seas as seamen on foreign ships, or in the phosphate mines of Ocean Island or Nauru, and postage stamps.

The latter are large and colour ful, known to collectors throughout the world, and pro duced in quantities far exceed ing the postal needs of Tuvalu’s 8000 citizens. A small quantity of copra is also exported. There

is a pleasant 19th-century

flavour about the way sacks of dried copra are manhandled into whaleboats on the outer islands, after which the boats are skilfully manoeuvred through the passage in the reef, out to the waiting ship.

Plans are being made for a fishing industry, based on a local cannery to be funded by Australia. Shortly after inde pendence Tuvalu extended its oceanic fishing limit to 200 miles, but with no ocean-going fishing craft of its own it relies on Korean and Taiwanese trawlers to pay licence fees to fish in its waters. (Recently a friend in Funafuti wrote to me that they had ‘bagged’ a Taiwanese trawler caught fish ing 70 miles off-shore.) (PIM

Sep 1978 pB.)

With fewer than 100 visitors per year there is virtually no tourism in Tuvalu, and because of its small size and remote ness, none is expected in the foreseeable future. However,

Nanumea Village from the church steeple.

Traditional dress - Tuvalu style.

in my opinion Tuvalu has a lot to offer potential tourists. In addition to fishing and skin diving in almost untouched waters, searching for war relics in the bush, and observing the Polynesian way of life in

uncommercialised villages

where visitors are treated as honoured guests, have obvious attractions. Tuvalu is off the beaten track in the truest sense of this well-worn expression, and, to use another cliche, the visitor must be prepared to ‘rough it’ as regards both trans port and accommodation.

However, it is well worth it.

The only link with the out side world is the weekly plane from Suva, which lands on the coral runway at Funafuti, built during the war. When not in use by the aircraft, the runway is used as a sporting ground, in particular for the Tuvaluan ballgame known as te ano,

played with a pandanus-leaf

ball. I won’t attempt to de scribe the rules here.

None of the outer islands has an airstrip, and inter-island

travel is exclusively by the ship

Nivanga (meaning ‘voyage’),

which makes monthly or fort nightly round trips to most islands. ‘Plane day’ in Funafuti is a big event, when most of the

population gathers along the

airstrip to see who the new arrivals are, and say goodbye to departing friends. Most new arrivals get a mention over Radio Tuvalu on the same day.

Otherwise, the national radio

carries mainly taped music,

shipping news, politics, and

signs off with the national an them every evening at 7.30 pm.

The inter-island ship is a Tuvaluan institution, around which so much of the islands’ life revolves. The ship has first and second class cabins, each with their own saloons, toilets, etc., but in the cramped space on board these colonial-relic

distinctions are largely ignored.

Most people travel by ‘deck passage’ anyway, which is cer tainly more comfortable than trying to go to sleep in the hot, stuffy cabins. Days are spent

singing to the accompaniment

of ukuleles under tarpaulins on deck, or trailing fishing lines after the boat. Sometimes sharks can be seen following in search of scraps. For the ‘cabin’ passengers, meals consist of beef and rice served in the sa loon, but deck passengers mostly bring their own food, of the native variety.

On reaching an island, the Nivanga anchors off the reef, and is often met by people in outrigger canoes. When wind and tide are right, one of the two landing boats is lowered into the water, filled with pass engers and their belongings, and then heads for the passage in the reef. Shooting the reef passage even under the best of conditions can be a tricky job, and despite the skill of the Tuvaluan sailors, a boat some times overturns, so everyone has to swim for it, and cargo is

recovered later as best as poss ible. Back at home in Funafuti, the ship anchors in the lagoon, but despite many problems plans for a deep-water jetty are still underway, so that the land ing craft need not be used in

Funafuti. Spending long quiet

nights on deck under the stars, I managed to learn a bit about traditional Polynesian navi gation from the sailors, such as interpreting winds, currents, stars, clouds and birds.

Each one of the former Ellice islands has a separate European discoverer, and there was little contact with the out side world until the arrival of missionaries in the 1860 s. In the later years of the 19th cen tury some of the islands suf fered from raids by blackbirders, who took away a considerable part of the popu lation. (On one island I was shown an area of red sand which tradition has it became that colour from the blood of a party of blackbirders killed

there 100 years ago.) This led to the islands being taken under British protection in the 1890 s.

Since then their history has been uneventful, apart from an interlude during World War II when American forces occupied Funafuti, Nanumea and Nukulaelae, and built air strips from which to engage the Japanese in Tarawa to the north. Older people have a lot of stories to tell about wartime events, and even today there are a lot of old aircraft parts in use as water-tanks, building materials, and racks for drying copra.

Tour of

Oceania

The Australian Institute of In ternational Affairs, New South Wales branch, is mounting a tour of Oceania from August 16 to September 7.

Those taking part will visit Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, New Hebrides and New Caledonia.

Tour leader Colonel D. M.

Ramsay told PIM: ‘Our aim is to stimulate further the good understanding between Aus tralia and the countries to be visited. ‘We have decided on a num ber of topics for study and dis cussion, including trade between countries in the re

gion, relationships with neigh

bouring countries and with major powers, security and de fence of the region, and the two hundred nautical mile exclusive economic zones.’

Colonel Ramsay may be contacted at 121 Edgecliff Road, Woollahra, 2025.

Unloading the landing craft at Nanumea Lagoon.

Meleangi at Funafuti