These low-lying coral atolls span three thousand kilometres of ocean, home to barely eighty thousand people. Sir Arthur Grimble, author of A Pattern of Islands, wrote eloquently of his experiences as a colonial officer in the Gilbert Islands a century ago. Even in spite of the upheaval of global war then independence, daily life has changed little in Grimble’s former colony.

“Television (we have none)... we do work but we have not become slaves to it.” With these well-chosen words the 78,000 Micronesians of Kiribati (Kirr-i-bas) - known to our parents’ generation as Gilbert Islanders - present themselves to the world.

It’s the kind of place where everybody comes out to the airport when a flight is due; where the departing traveller, formally rubber-stamped out of the country is turned loose for the next hour, free to wander out the gate and disappear.

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