Thursday 29 September 2011

The little Island that could

the little island that could is my lovely friend maritas Blog its brilliant and funny and eductaional, you just cant lose! if you need more persuading she says:


I am one half Australian and one half Kiribati. I grew up in Australia and I recently admitted to myself that my knowledge on Kiribati is a bit crap.  What/where is is Kiribati you say?  Well my standard answer is that it is a tiny group of islands halfway between Australia and Hawaii – so pretty much in the middle of the Pacific, the middle of nowhere.
My other ways of describing this tiny, wonderful country are:
  • It’s has the International Date Line and the equator running through it
  • 3 hours flight Fiji
  • Next door to Nauru
  • The people have the skin colour of the Fijians and hair like the Hawaiians
So in short, it’s a really small group of islands in the middle of nowhere.  Now as proud as I am that one half of me comes from there, I’m rubbish at the language, I haven’t spent longer than 2 months there EVER (a fact that I am very ashamed about), I don’t know all my family members (even though there honestly about 100, this is no excuse) and I haven’t been to the smaller outer islands.  Even writing these points down, I find this extremely embarrassing.  To top this off, reports have been stating for a good while that the main islands may not exist due to climate change and rising sea waters.  This is where my education needs to hike itself up a level.
A country that I am from may disappear in less than 100 years.  Bit shit really.
So this is my quest to learn more about climate change, my culture, my family and everything that is related to Kiribati.  I am hoping to get to Kiribati late 2011 or early 2012 but in the meantime I will potter away on this little blog, trawl the net, talk to people and investigate everything about the islands.  Eventually I am hoping to make a documentary on how Kiribati is very much a victim of climate change and tell other people about the wonderful people who’s homes are threatened by waves getting higher and higher.
Finally, I’m going to do my best to make sure I write in the most comprehensive and most direct way possible.  I hate reading articles that make me feel sillier for not being able to understand so I’m going to do my best to explain to myself (and you lovely people that bother to read this) in laymans terms.  No big words, nothing fussy just simple and  easy to read.  If it looks like I’m getting too big for my boots by all means let me know and I’ll appreciate the feedback and turn it down a notch.
Marita

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