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National Geographic : 2015 Nov
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kiribati 135 A wrecked fishing vessel serves as a diving platform for Tarawa youngsters, who grow up in, on, and always within sight and sound of the ocean. This and coming generations face tough climate challenges as warming, rising, acidifying seas threaten life on their native islands. friends—Vasiti Tebamare and Tinaai Teaua, who run a health spa in the village of Temwaiku— suggested we take our meal to the airport run way. It is something of a tradition, on sultry nights too stifling even for a fan to relieve, for families to spread their mats on the littleused runway and eat a picnic supper. It’s always cool there, with a breeze off the ocean. We took grilled fish, rice, and fried breadfruit chips to eat and moimoto—green coconuts—to drink. The airfield was twinkling with flashlights and bathed in the soft murmur of conversation. We found a quiet spot, ate, talked, then lay on our backs and stared at the blazing night sky—the “ belly of the eel,” as IKiribati call the Milky Way. I wished I could name the constellations as the early navigators did, knowing them as in timately as if they were family. They learned them by seeing the sky as the roof of a meeting house, divided into a grid by rafters and lines of thatch. The stars rose in one quadrant, sailed across the roof, and set in another. Master navigators knew upwards of 150 stars. You could put them anywhere in the ocean, and they would know exactly where they were. IKiribati might live on small islands, but there is nothing small about their sense of their place in the world. j KENNEDY WARNE New Zealand writer and editor Kennedy Warne has visited three of the atoll nations in his Pacific backyard that are most at risk from rising sea levels: Tokelau, Tuvalu, and now Kiribati. described as “princes in laughter and friend- ship, poetry and love.” It’s true: Joy is their sixth sense, and it shows in everything they do. What did you learn from the Kiribati people? What I wish I’d learned was the secret of their happiness. Kiribati people were once
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