I live in Kiribati

My home is, for the time being, in the Republic of Kiribati, a country straddling the Equator in the Pacific Ocean. Formerly known as the Gilbert and Ellice Islands is it now an independent nation, consisting of 33 atolls spread across three and a half million square kilometres of the central Pacific Ocean. I live on the Tarawa atoll, a long narrow strip of reef which bends around a turquoise lagoon. The atoll barely rises above the ocean, and is not much wider than a football field at its widest point. In fact a footballer could kick the footy from one beach over the atoll to the other beach without too much troulbe at all. From my front window I look over the ocean, and from the back window, the lagoon; a lagoon which is much the same size as Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne. When people speak of being ‘in tune’ with the environment then nowhere is it more the case than with the Kiribati people. They are never out of sight of the ocean, never too far to hear the sounds of the waves relentlessly pounding the protective reef. The I-Kiribati are of course dependent on the ocean for survival, fishing daily in the ocean and lagoon, either out in small fishing craft or searching for shell fish and octopus along the reef. Very few tourists come to Kiribati, but a number of travellers arrive, sometimes by yacht or more often on the twice weekly 737. Those tired of the city work routines in their home country come in search of a professional challenge and a complete ‘sea change’. It is certainly a sea change, as I mentioned you are never more than one hundred metres from the sea.