Nanumea

Nanumea

Nanumea is the most northerly of the Tuvalu islands; it is also one of the islands formed round an atoll.  But the lagoon is much smaller than the lagoon on the Funafuti atoll, and the U-shaped island forms almost three sides of the atoll.  The main township is in the upper left arm of the U, and the base, and right arm, of the U are largely uninhabited, although there are many pigs, both in pens, and roaming loose.  So there is quite a large area of jungle and palm trees, with a few rough tracks running through.  Without a doubt, the best way to get round the island is on a fat bike:

The skyline of the township is dominated by the church building, with its tall spire:

The Funafuti lagoon has two natural entrances for relatively large ships; it would therefore be a natural safe harbour from early shipping days, and it is probably this feature that has resulted in Funafuti being the capital of Tuvalu.  But, with its northerly position, Nanumea is closer to the Gilbert islands, and so, in 1943, it was the obvious place from which to launch an attack on the Japanese there.  The Americans took over Nanumea, and moved all the locals onto one of the smaller islands round the atoll, and created a large military base on the main island.  They cleared at least half of the jungle and palm trees to create runways etc, but after 70 years the jungle is once again in control.  But the 200 meter long channel, blasted through the reef by the Americans, has stood the test of time, and still provides a way into the lagoon for small boats; but not large ships:

We arrived at the entrance to the “American Channel” on the morning of the 27^th June in the Baldur, a small charter ship, after a 25 hour trip from Funafuti:

Being a small ship without any stabilisers, the Baldur rolled all the way in the relatively light 2 to 3 meter swell; but it is still not small enough to get through the channel.  Two wooden launches, with outboard motors, were used to transport our team and all our equipment onto the island:

There was also some equipment to be transported out to the ship.  It took two days for all this to be completed, with the continuing swell complicating the transfer between ship and launch.  Here is our main living accommodation:

And I am sleeping in the annex next door:

The infrastructure on Nanumea is similar to Funafuti, with the main differences being that, there are no sealed roads,  no Wifi connection to the internet, and no mobile service.  Every building has at least one plastic water tank, but on Nanumea they appear to have been funded by the EU, rather than Australian Aid.  At this time of year there are sufficient rain showers to keep these tanks supplied with fresh water.  Electricity is distributed via underground cables, with all the distribution boxes being the original concrete ones:

(On Funafuti some of these concrete boxes have been replaced with more modern plastic ones.)  Electricity is generated by one of 3 diesel generators – so long as there is sufficient diesel, the service runs from 6:00am till midnight.  Once the new solar/battery installation is completed, the service will run for 24 hours, with the diesel generators being kept for cloudy days and emergencies.

At some stage a landline-based telephone service has been installed on all the inhabited Tuvalu islands; in some ways this is unfortunate because there is now less incentive to imitate other third-world countries that are leapfrogging straight to a mobile service.  Funafuti has managed to justify a mobile service, and also a WiFi connection to the internet is available, so long as you are not too far away from the government building.  DSL services are supposedly available to government and some households, but to us visitors on Nanumea the only internet connection available is via the “Internet Café”, where you can plug into an ethernet connection and share the satellite link to the outside world with the rest of Tuvalu – yes, it is very slow:

A project has been identified to run a cable communications link from Funafuti to Fiji, at a cost of A$33M, but this has not been funded.

Garbage disposal is not such a big issue on Nanumea, compared to Funafuti, mainly because there is about a tenth of the population.  But there is still no obvious sorting of garbage; it is just that the pit required is much smaller.

The Nanumea locals have been very welcoming, and on our second night on the island we were invited to dine with a local family:

Shane’s helicopter has also been a great hit with the local kids – here he was encouraging them to jump off the wharf, while the helicopter was taking a movie from overhead:

But after a hard days work, there is nothing like a cold coconut: