Postcards from the Edge

This time last year my husband and I, along with 2000 other cruise ship passengers, were basking in the sun on a remote beach on Fanning Island in the South Pacific Republic of Kiribati.

Fanning Island did not rate high on our list of places to visit – mostly because we had never even heard of it - but since the cruise ship was going there, with or without us, we thought we might as well tag along.

Before departing for an 11 day cruise of the Hawaiian Islands, we researched the World Wide Web for information on this remote destination. Perhaps because so few people have actually visited, information was scarce. However, we learned that the tiny coral atoll is part of the Line Islands and is located at 3°51'36?N 159°21'52?W?3.86, -159.36444 or about 1200 miles southwest of Hawaii and 228 miles north of the equator. Maximum elevation is only about 3 meters above high tide.

The cruise line’s website touted Fanning Island (whose official name is Tabuaeran) as unspoiled and pristine like “Hawaii was 100 years ago.” The cruise line built a school on the island – wasn’t that nice of them? A couple of websites mentioned that the children required school supplies, so we stuffed a suitcase and took it with us.

Fanning Island struck me as an odd destination for a cruise ship filled with mostly pale faced Americans and Canadians whom had certain expectations, like flush toilets and somewhere to plug in their laptops.

Fanning Island does not offer either of those amenities, or any others.

The cruise ship literature would lead you to believe they are sailing there so you can experience one of the remotest places on earth. The Internet, on the other hand, led me to believe that the cruise ship was sailing there because of an 1890's law that states an international flagship cannot start and end its trip within Hawaiian waters. It was also more cost effective for the cruise line to visit a foreign country than to pay US port charges.

In any case, on December 6th, 2007, we arrived on this far flung island, greeted by smiling, singing natives in grass skirts.

A market had been set up for cruise ship passengers, where shark tooth knives and elaborate shell necklaces could be purchased on the cheap. We bought a couple of $5.00 necklaces and spent 60 cents US to mail a postcard home (postage stamps are apparently one of the islands major exports). We spent considerably more “tipping” natives to snap their photographs.

Few passengers bothered to leave the comfort of the umbrella drinks and beach chairs inside the cruise line compound, but those who wandered outside had a remarkable experience, one the Internet could not adequately explain. Some things simply have to be experienced.

As fate would have it, a fellow cruiser inadvertently wandered onto “hospital” grounds. The “doctor,” thinking the tourist required medical attention, invited her inside, where a woman had given birth literally minutes before. The baby was weighed on a set of scales used to weigh fish.

We strolled down a hard-packed dirt road, where pigs ran free, presumably until they were required for food. At least one islander had hooked up a DVD player to a 12 volt car battery, which could be seen through the slats of his grass hut.

We came across a beach littered with flattened beer cans, which raised the obvious question: Is this type of tourism good or bad? I do not know the answer. That’s a question best answered by anthropologists.

And why, you may be wondering, am I philosophizing on this subject a full year after my visit?

It’s because, yesterday, I finally received the postcard I’d sent to myself from Fanning Island, almost 12 months ago. I’d pretty much forgotten about that postcard, but its arrival prompted me to revisit the World Wide Web for updates on island life.

I discovered that the cruise line has stopped visiting Fanning Island. Whether the islanders are better or worse off as a result of the cruise ship decision to pull out is once again a question for anthropologists. And while my gut tells me I may have intruded where I didn’t belong, I can’t help but be thankful for the experience.