Gresham Family Exodus

Eric and Birgitta are a couple from Sweden who cruised years ago with their three sons and are now doing it again just the two of them. Eric is a doctor and our little kid boat contingent kept him busy while we were in Kiribati.

First, Ulysses, the boy on Skua had vomiting and diarrhea for several days, and so an SSB consult with Dr. Eric was arranged on our morning net, which resulted in very solid advice that they seek local medical attention right away. The hospital is quite a long bus ride from Betio, but there turned out to be a little medical clinic near the wharf that was able to provide antibiotics for the bug that was ailing Ulysses.

Next up in Dr. Eric’s queue was Brenden. He had a disk shaped sore on his ankle that just wasn’t healing, so Tim took him over to Ariel IV for a face to face consult. Eric cleaned it well, telling us that it’s better to use hand sanitizer to clean a sore than hydrogen peroxide. Who knew. He also explained that the bacteria live and thrive underneath the crusty stuff on top, so we should keep that clear. Sure enough, Brenden’s sore started to heal within a day. And later that afternoon Eric went over our list of antibiotics that we carry on board and made some recommendations for us.

And finally came the EOS II saga, which entailed multiple illnesses running concurrently. I’ll start with the impetigo, which I’m fairly certain was an extension of Brenden’s little ankle sore. You see, after arriving in Abemama, after Brenden’s sore was all healed up, Alex broke out with a few of his own disk shaped sores, and that’s when I realized that it must be impetigo. (Back in Fiji, little Benjamin on Fluenta had a pretty bad case of impetigo, and this looked just like it, PLUS I now remembered that part of the treatment was making sure all the crusty coating was kept washed off.) Alex started the treatment and we showed it to EOS II and told them about it in case the girls get it, because it’s imperative to catch the first ones and clean them in order to keep it from spreading. Fast forward to after we left Abemama and EOS II was still there, and sure enough Ahia broke out in pussy sores and they were having trouble treating them by cleaning them since it was so painful for Ahia.

Jumping over to the second illness… shortly after arriving in Abemama the whole EOS II crew was suffering from diarrhea. It should be noted that after just about everyone we knew well enough to talk about these sorts of things with suffered some amount of diarrhea after being in Tarawa. It’s like a Tarawa right of passage or something. Anyway, for EOS II it started mild, then got pretty bad, then most of the family recovered. Except Kiani. She suffered with it for days, then a week, then for even longer.

It seemed like all the shit really hit the fan with both illnesses AFTER we had left them in Abamama. So, we were far away and not really able to help. Except that’s where Dr. Eric and the SSB radio come in. I emailed Eric and asked him to join us for one of our daily afternoon SSB calls and from that point forward he was on the radio with us every day consulting on what to do for the girls. He listened to symptoms, advised immediate courses of action, and what antibiotics each of the girls likely needed. They were challenging conversations sometimes, because Ariel IV was already up in Majuro, and most of the time Eric could receive us but not EOS II, but then EOS II could receive Ariel IV better than I could. So, we had this weird one-way relay thing going, and we had to be ever so careful to get everything correct. EOS II was able to get some limited amount of medical attention at the “clinic” in Abemama, but quickly made the decision to return to Tarawa so that Kiani could have tests run at the hospital. All the while we had daily and sometimes twice daily SSB consults with Dr. Eric. It was a challenge to get the the proper medical treatment in Tarawa, but with some persistence both girls were on the road to recovery. It’s almost certain that Ahia had impetigo (like Alex and Brenden) and it’s somewhat less certain but still likely that Kiani had Giardia. There is always risk involved when travelling out here on the ocean in remote places but time and time again we are reminded of how much the cruising community sticks together and helps each other out. Thanks Dr. Eric!

Eric and Birgitta of Ariel IV (with the EOS II girls)

On the day after Christmas, which apparently the rest of the English speaking world calls “Boxing Day”, we went ashore with EOS II in order to make a quick visit to the village before once again moving anchorages. This “quick trip to shore” turned into an all day event, because there was a big celebration with a traditional dance competition among all the villages of the island (it turns out that there’s 13). The dancing went on all day from 11am to about 5pm. The local people were very nice to us and treated us like royalty, giving us front row mats to sit on and giving us all sorts of food and drink, including packaged cookies and water that tasted like smoke. This dance competition was a special thing to see, because it wasn’t a show being put on for tourists; this is what they would have been doing whether we were there or not, and we had the good fortune to get to be a part of it.

The dancing of Kiribati was noticeably different than that of Tuvalu; The movements were less fluid with short abrupt movements of the head, arms, and hands. However, the singing and the drums that accompanied the dancing were very similar to what we had seen in Nanumea, Tuvalu. I put together a video of the dancing in Tuvalu and Kiribati, which you can see if you missed it.

Boxing Day Dance-Off in Abemama

The very best part of the day had to be when Kiani (4 year old from EOS II) was included in one of the dances. They decked her out in the full costume, taught her a few moves, and then let her perform with a group of kids. It was a riot! The place erupted in cheers and laughter, and Kiani had the time of her life. Even Alex was close to admitting that it was worth coming to shore to see… he was laughing so hard he was almost crying.

Kiani brings down the house!

The dance troupe

Here is a link to a funny write-up by Lahnee on the EOS II blog about Kiani’s day as a star : 

After the dance off we walked around the village a little and found a couple of small stores, and Lahnee bought some flour that only had a few bugs in it.

Walking around Abemama

We spent Christmas in Abemama, and we did our traditional family personal pizza baking on Christmas Eve. Back home making homemade pizza was a novelty, since we basically did it once a year, and it was so easy to just call up and order a pizza any time we wanted pizza. But now on the boat we make it all the time, including homemade sauce, so it’s a little more routine. Well, I guess making personal pizzas with topping choices is still a little different and special enough to remain our Christmas Eve tradition.

Christmas Day started out with an hour sail across the lagoon in order to be in a more protected spot when the wind was supposed to shift. The weather seemed to not care that it was Christmas and that we just wanted to sit, relax, eat and drink. Later, EOS II came over for our Christmas party, and they brought their Christmas tree with them to give Exodus a more festive vibe. And by Christmas tree I of course mean a palm frond wrapped in purple boas, what were you expecting? Our feast consisted of beef and papaya stew, lasagna, cous cous, boxed mashed potatoes, canned green beans, and homemade dinner rolls. Brenden referred to these as “fluffy clouds of yumminess,” which made my day!

The only gifts exchanged on Exodus this year were with EOS II, and all gifts were either a funny gag gift or something found on the boat or made (like the lego butterfly Brenden made for the girls, complete with movable wings). We had an early meal and then lounged around on the net up front until the sun went down.

Merry Christmas!

Fluffy clouds of yumminess (I was too slow taking the picture)

The whole “gift-free” Christmas thing was partly out of necessity, because it’s not like there were ample shopping opportunities around. But it it also just seemed to be the logical conclusion to the trajectory we had been on since we left home. Every year the gifts would become more sparse as we focused more on where we were and who we were with and less and less on gifts and stuff. So, this being our last Christmas cruising we got rid of the gifts altogether. I told the boys that we would have Christmas like that from now on and they responded like the time I told them we weren’t going to have any furniture when we got home, just a big woven mat in the living room. Haha, mom is so cute.

Most of the Northbound fleet was planning to head to Abiang, the atoll just to the north of Tarawa, for Christmas. However, after reading about our various options, we decided we would go our own way and head south to Abemama instead. We wanted to get just a little more off the beaten path and we wanted something a little more low key for Christmas. Abemama looked like it had a lot of options for anchoring near villages and passes that could be easily accessed for spearfishing. Once again, a quick conversation with True Blue V revealed that we were on the same page, and they actually departed for Abemama a couple days before us. Even though we were consciously deciding not to follow the pack, it was nice to know we wouldn’t be alone on Christmas.

Abemama is about 90 miles SE of Tarawa, so we made an overnight passage out of it. We were able to sail most of the way, but it certainly wasn’t the kind of sailing where you can just set the sails and forget about them. There were numerous squalls and wind shifts. In fact, I think we sailed at almost every point of sail during that short passage. We had an easy entry through the western pass and hung a left in order to anchor next to True Blue V near the village of Tabiang.

Satellite image of Abemama

Almost immediately after dropping anchor we were visited by a young man in an outrigger canoe. His name was Tanro, and we invited him aboard and showed him around Exodus, and he invited us to come see the village, so the next morning we went to shore with True Blue V. We met some nice people and sat and drank coconuts with a man called Karakaua who spent time on a commercial fishing vessel as a young man, so his English was impeccable and he had an interest in travel and asked questions about own experiences. Tanro gave us a tour of the village including a peak at the airfield and the ocean side of the island. Of course, Tim wanted to scout the potential for lobsters. We tried to find the local police officer in Tabiang in order to check in with him rather than wait until we visited the main village, but we never did find him. I remember that Tim asked Tanro if the police are busy and what sort of things people get in trouble with the police for, and he said, “oh you know, when you don’t have your pig tied up.”

Tanro and Tim (and a large pig) – Photo by True Blue V

One of the things immediately apparent about this village, compared with most others we had visited, is that the structures were much more traditionally constructed. There was very little concrete and corrugated metal, the exception being the churches and the large fales, that serve as town halls. It’s easy to have a first impression that they must be much poorer, but I suppose that depends on your definition of wealth. If you think about it, this island is pretty much on the equator. It’s hot and humid and they are not at risk for cyclone, so really the structures are exactly what they need, and they are made from materials readily available on the island. Self-sufficient certainly doesn’t mean poor.

Traditional thatched roofs in the village of Tabiang

Another observation was that for the most part, with the exception of the man who spent time on the commercial fishing boat, the English of the people of the village was far less developed than say, Nanumea, an outer island of Tuvalu.

After a couple of days the wind died down a bit and we moved the three boats, Exodus, True Blue V, and EOS II (they arrived the day after us), down to anchor off the small island of Bike. It wasn’t the flattest of all places to anchor, especially at high tide, but it gave Tim and Slade easy access to the south pass for spearfishing, and they came back with a dogtooth tuna. Lahnee, the girls, and I went ashore in the mighty EOS dinghy and walked along the beach. We met a small, extended family who were living there, but they didn’t speak any English, so we weren’t able to get their story. One of the women had a very young baby, probably not more than a couple weeks old. They gave us coconuts to drink, and later Lahnee returned to give her some nappies (that’s Australian for diapers.)

Kiani at Bike Island

While we were anchored at Bike, True Blue V dropped a bomb on us that they were changing their plans and leaving Abemama and heading back to Tarawa to clear out before Christmas and then head to Majuro. Since they arrived in Tarawa before us they had less time left on their visas and they were getting concerned about getting back in time and also about government holidays between Christmas and New Years. It all happened so fast that it felt like I was standing there with my mouth hanging open as they pulled out of the anchorage. It was disappointing not to be with them on Christmas, but so goes the life of a cruiser… so many things can impact your decision making. So, it was just us and The Mighty EOS II for Christmas, but more about that later.

When we finally got around to going to the main village, we were visited by the local policeman, so we finally officially checked into Abemama. We invited him on board and showed him our letters from customs and immigration that documented our permission to be there. We were granted permission for only a 10 day stay, but with some heavy weather expected we asked him if we would be able to stay longer, and he said no problem. (In the end we didn’t test this since the weather cleared and we left before our 10 days were up.) When the weather came it was strong winds from the north, so we spent our final days in Abemama back up in the northern part of the atoll.

In Kiribati, the immigration office seems to have the lead on this process, and we submitted our letter requesting permission to visit a bunch of islands when we cleared in. In Kiribati we were requesting islands south of Tarawa, so we did not request to stop outbound but rather we planned to come back to Tarawa to check out. A couple days later we went back to the immigration office and picked up our approval letter, and then we took it to the customs office near the wharf, so that they could prepare their own approval letters, which we picked up the next day. We requested to stay up to 14 days at each island, but we were granted only 10 days. We requested several islands, and it seems like the ones who only requested a single island were granted the requested 14 days.

When Lauri and I went to immigration to pick up or letters, we asked if we could pick up for all the boats, which would save everyone another ride out to Bairiki. However, I guess we had in mind that all the letters would be prepared already, and we’d just pick them up and go. Instead, we waited about 2 hours while they prepared each letter, answering questions about gender of different people and helping the immigration officer decipher some of the handwriting. Unfortunately, they didn’t do our letters first, because if so we might have just bailed. Lauri is a really nice person, so she probably never would have suggested it, but I pretty much just put it out there that once we got our letters we should just go. It turns out she was on board with that. On the bright side, our time sitting there gave us a chance to get to know each other a little better. So, after that she knew that I’m the bitch that didn’t want to wait for everyone’s letters. And she was OK with that.

We took the bus to the egg farm and then decided to walk back from there. At one point we were standing in some shade having a rest, and we must have looked lost, because two women in a car stopped to give us a ride. We quickly accepted and escaped the heat with a quick ride back. Lauri gave them some flip-flops as a thank you.

One of the other cruisers met a local guy who said he would arrange to hire a van for us and would take us to some vegetable and egg farms. So, the day after clearing in, several of us headed to shore with high hopes to meet the guy at his house and then spend the day getting all those fresh things we hadn’t had in a while. He had told us he lived near the police station, so when we found the police station, we just went in and asked if they knew where he lived. Sure enough, they pointed us in the right direction. When we got to his house, he wasn’t there, because he was at work. Now, my memory is a little fuzzy on this, but I think someone gave us a ride to the government building where the guy worked as it was quite a ways away and I don’t recall walking out there. Anyway, when we got to the government building, we talked to the guy, and it turned out we would need to do it another day. Bummer. Well, no problem, we had directions to an “egg farm” that wasn’t too far from there, so we walked to check it out.

The little egg farm was actually one of the highlights of Tarawa for me, and it’s kind of ironic with all the negative opinions about Tarawa that it was here that we found the absolute freshest eggs we have ever found anywhere. Here is an email I wrote about the place:

I would like to say something positive about Tarawa, so I will mention the small egg farm we found where we could get fresh eggs, and by fresh, I mean gathered right out from under the hens. They had what looked like newly constructed, very sturdy chicken coops with a total of about 85 chickens. It was very clean and the chickens all looked healthy. The feed troughs were tires sliced in half sideways and suspended from the ceiling, so the feed was always up off the ground. One of the women we spoke to there is educated as a lawyer and her English was very good and she was able to give us a few more tips about shopping in Betio. The hens lay about 60 eggs/day and curiously, most of their customers are Chinese. We went 3 days in a row to buy all we could and share amongst all the cruising boats. It was a nice little family business, and I really hope they continue to have success.

The egg farm in Tarawa

The only thing about the egg farm is that you never knew if you’d be able to actually get eggs or not. That first day we went they only had 5 eggs, but they let us place an order for picking up the next day. I suggested that we let Birgitta from Ariel IV take the 5 eggs, because they were leaving Tarawa for Majuro, and the rest of us would be getting eggs the next day, because, you know, we placed an order. This was good logic when needing to adjudicate what to do with 5 eggs when there were 6 women there wanting eggs.

After the egg farm we decided we would go check out the various grocery stores. We were a ways from town, but some of us felt like walking so we set off while Lahnee (with the two girls) and another person planned to take a bus. So, the rest of us walked a little ways and then made a stop at a grocery store, where they had cold crispy green apples that only cost you your right hand. After scouting the place out I walked outside to stand in the shade and have a drink, and off in the distance I see Lahnee walking with Ahia in her arms and Kiani at her side. I walked over to meet her and found out that the other person had taken the last seat on a bus and left them standing on the side of the rode. Oh my god I almost died, I mean, who does that? Lahnee, as usual, had a good sense of humor about it.

We spent the rest of the day walking all the way back to Betio and scouting out three more grocery stores with no fresh veggies to be found other than moldy onions and cabbage. I think the best part about the whole day was when Amanda bought a bag of donuts and shared them with all of us. And they weren’t even really donuts, just balls of dough with a little bit of sweetness. But they hit the spot, especially for those of us like me and Kiani who get grouchy when we’re hungry.

Walking around Tarawa looking for eggs and veggies

Back to the eggs…even though we placed an order, it turned out to be not quite that simple. The next day when Lauri (Free Spirit) and I went to pick up our order they only had 11 eggs for us. In the meantime, Lauri had given all the eggs she already had to True Blue V, because they were leaving for Abemama, and Lauri assumed she’d be getting more eggs. So, I insisted she take these 11 eggs, since I still had a few from Funafuti, and we’d just keep going every day to hopefully get enough eggs for all of us.

I went by myself the next day and hit the jackpot and scored a grand total of 43 eggs. But by the time I divided them among the other boats I think we got 8 of them. Only a cruiser would devote this much time in a blog to the effort expended to acquire a few eggs. (Spoiler alert: just wait until we get to Aranuka and I go on and on about Pumpkin.)

Upon entering the atoll, we hailed Tarawa Radio on VHF channel 16. We were arriving on the weekend, so I made it clear that we were happy to remain on board until Monday morning for clearing in. (If you clear in during off hours you usually have to pay overtime fees.) She told us that would be fine, but if the clearance officers were at the wharf clearing in any other boats, then she would call us. We didn’t hear from her until Monday morning, when she called us to arrange for us to pick up the boarding party at the wharf. Three officials came on board: Customs, Bio-Security, and The Police. They said Immigration would come later and that we could not leave the boat until immigration came. However, hours later we received a radio call from Tarawa radio with instructions to proceed to the immigration office in Bairiki to complete clearance.

Bairiki is about a 30-minute bus ride from Betio (you can see it on the satellite image in this post). We were a big group, five boats in all, so someone in our group organized for us to ride in the back of a big pick-up truck. At the immigration office we completed our clearing in paperwork and also submitted our letters to request permission to visit outer islands. You get a one month visa free of charge, and we were told you can extend for a fee, but we did not do this.

Piled in the back of a truck heading to Immigration

Kiribati is an island nation that covers a huge geographic area of the Pacific Ocean. There are three island groups, which are: The Line Islands (furthest east), The Phoenix Islands (in the middle), and the Gilbert Islands (furthest west). It was the Gilbert Island chain that we visited as it lies in between Tuvalu and The Marshall Islands.

The island nation of Kiribati

The total population of Kiribati of over 105,000 with most of the people living in The Gilbert Islands, and most of those people living in the capital of Tarawa. Continuing on, most of those people live on the island of Betio which has a population density of 10,000 people per square km. (Spoiler alert: I thought this was dense until we got to Ebeye in The Marshalls). For reference, the city of Los Angeles has a populatoin density of just over 3,000 per square km. The map below shows the layout of The Gilbert Island chain and the location of Tarawa within it. It also highlights the other islands we visited: Abemama, Aranuka, and Marakei. (Spoiler alter: we would also visit the island of Onotoa on our eventual way south.)

Before I go any further I’d like to point out the correct pronunciation of “Kiribati” and “Betio.” The Gilbertese language does not have the letter “s.” Instead, the letter combination of “ti” makes the sound of the letter “s.” So, Kiribati is pronounced “Kiribass” and Betio is pronounced, “Besso.” Also, the letter “r” is pronounced more like it is in Spanish (or Scottish English), so Kiribati is prounouced with a little flick of the tongue on the letter “r.

The Gilbert Island chain highlighting the islands that we visited

Everything we had read about Tarawa and Betio were negative. In fact, there’s a book out there called Sex Lives of Cannibals about a guy from the U.S. who went to live in Tarawa for awhile, and from everything I’ve heard, it’s a pretty negative account of the place (although also quite humorous). Even though everyone asks me if I’ve read the book, at this point I have not. I made a conscious decision not to read it before we went there because after reading some Amazon reviews, I decided I didn’t want to be tainted by someone else’s negative views of the place first. (Spoiler alert: I still haven’t read the book. Too many blog posts to make…)

There is only one pass at Tarawa, located on the west side. On our first entry, we were happy to arrive before the sun went down, but we had previous intel from our friends on Ariel IV that it is a reasonable pass to navigate at night. It is wide, well lit, and current is negligible. We did not follow the shipping line on the navionics chart to the Betio anchorage, rather we cut a more direct route to the west of the shipping line.

The main anchorage in Tarawa is off the densely populated island of Betio in the southwest corner of the atoll. This is where the main commercial wharf is located and also where the customs office is located. Unfortunately, the anchorage is totally exposed to the north and northwest, so it would get rather lively at times. There are other places to anchor within the lagoon, but we were never in Tarawa long enough to bother moving from Betio.

Satellite image of the southern end of Tarawa

Overall, I am sad to say that Tarawa, and specifically Betio, was the most depressing place we have visited in the Pacific. It’s smelly, dirty, and way too crowded. The infrastructure is completely run down and the roads are mostly dirt which means they alternate between being a dry dusty mess and being a sticky muddy mess. Our first time there, there wasn’t a fresh vegetable to be found, only some moldy onions and cabbage. And it was the very first place we’ve been in the South Pacific where I have felt a little uncomfortable walking around at night. Nothing specific happened, so perhaps it was in my head. Or perhaps it’s just because of how crowded it was. One of the first things Dr. Eric (Ariel IV) told us when we got there was don’t even think about swimming in the harbor, and certainly don’t think about running your watermaker. Luckily, it rained enough while we were there that we could catch enough to fill our water tank plus do about 50 loads of laundry. And last but not least, it seems that the beaches are considered to be the public toilets. This approach may work when you are in a village with a few hundred people but think about what this means where there are 50,000 people on a small island. Pretty gross.

All that being said, I did find things to enjoy about Tarawa, and I am probably the least negative on of the place of all the cruisers we went through there with. Even though the streets were either dusty or muddy, I enjoyed walking around, checking out every little shop and interacting with people. There’s also the egg farm that was a huge highlight for me, but I’ll get to that a little bit later. I find you can make the most of any place you are, and dwelling on the negative can have somewhat of a snowball effect. Obviously, I found a lot of negative things about this place, but I didn’t dwell on them, and I think that’s why I didn’t hate this place as much as everyone else.

The inner harbor in Betio

The inner harbor in Betio

On Sunday morning EOS II arrived in Tarawa. We kicked their asses in the race to Tarawa AND the fishing competition. But we were good sports and invited them over for their own safe arrival drinks on Exodus, and what better morning drinks are there than Bloody Marys? Except Lahnee learned that she doesn’t really like Bloody Marys, so I had to make her some sissy la la drink.