C is for Carterets Atoll.
It all started with an article entitled ‘Pacific Atlantis’, by John Vidal, in The Guardian telling the plight of the Carteret islanders, and how life on their 6 island atoll was becoming unsustainable, relocation was possible and they might become the world’s first climate change refugees….
Sounds interesting I thought. I pitched it to a client and didn’t get a positive response. A year passes by and then the client called me back, if the story was still valid, would I go….
A couple of weeks later and I’m stepping, or rather climbing in an ungainly fashion, out of a dug out canoe onto the blinding white sands of Han Island. Thankfully the short journey in canoe, from our fishing trawler that myself and 3 colleagues had hired, hadn’t got me or my over-sized (in relation to the canoe, the water a mere inch below the side of the canoe) camera bag wet. ….So I step out onto the sand, in my orange flipflops, long sleeve trousers, long sleeve shirt, and the little bare white skin which was left was covered in anti-mosquito repellant and factor 30 sun screen. Naked children ran at the sight of me, running off into the bush, or hiding behind their mother’s legs. Not many white skinned photographers graced these shores obviously.
I was to spend the best part of the next three days on the atoll, moving from island to island, doing some interviews with a colleague, filming, and photographing. And Lady Luck was travelling with us.
On the day we arrived the islanders, in their ever hospitable way, performed a ‘welcome ceremony’ in our honour. Women wore some decorative make-up and headdresses and danced for our enjoyment, the men beat rudimentary home made drums, and played electric guitars which were connected to battery powered transistor radios which served as amplifiers. On their heads the men wore sunglasses and some tucked leaves in for decoration. The music was harsh, metallic, like early Velvet Underground, with a catchy riff, it appealed to my 1980′s Indie music preferences. The song would finish, and a new one would begin- sounding exactly like the last one, and again the women would dance. It was great.
We sat with the ‘Elders’ in a big circle, and we explained who we were and why we’d come. Off to our side a youth wearing a large green paper mache mask ran around and threw things at younger children. I was desperate to go photograph, but protocol demanded that I sat and talked, it was the right thing to do. The Masked Youth continued throwing stones, younger kids running off whenever he appeared. I asked about it, and got told it was to do with initiation ceremonies, but that it wasn’t really their tradition. The answer seemed contradictory, here we were miles from anywhere, on an isolated atoll, if it wasn’t their ceremony and traditions then to whom did it belong? Alas, and I regret it, by the time I could shoot images the Masked Youth had gone, or I was invited in a different direction, I forget, but for all that I can see the image in my head, I don’t have a frame of it. Sometimes to get other pics you have to let one go. Such is life.
Lady Luck was still with us, beside me in the shade, hiding from the equatorial sunlight. The Elders told us that the next day there would be a ‘school closing’ ceremony, with graduations and prize givings, music and dancing. We couldn’t have come at a more fortunate time, lots to see and experience, to photograph, to watch, to enjoy, to savour.
Islanders from all the islands making up the atoll came together for the ‘school closing’ at end of term. Each island provided a band who travelled by dug out canoe with their amps and electric guitars, their Tupac and Snoop Dogg t-shirts, their shades and their panifully shy smiles and “hello’s”. There weren’t many visitors to these islands, even the gangsta rappers were shy.
The school closed and speeches were made, prizes were given, children ran about, and some ran away whenever I, or one of my colleagues, approached. Some children walked beside us, not scared, not nervous. The bands played the same Velvet Underground sounding songs, and guitars cranked high blared out of their radios. One woman stood to the side holding a cassetter recorder on her shoulder taping the music. Women danced with headdresses made of little wooden birds and bananas, their hand actions during the dance mimicked the actions of someone rowing a canoe.
One little kid had no fear of the visitors. He walked on the beach with me as I toured the island, he held my hand and smiled, pointed at birds, at the sea, at the trees. His friends giggled and walked behind, or to the side, if I turned they scattered in all directions laughing, some crying. But this one little kid, skin blackened by the sun, showed no fear. Later that day, or the next, a teenage youth rowed me out to our fishing boat in a canoe, and in return I gave him a can of fizzy drink for himself, and also one for the little friendly kid back on shore. Sure said the teenager, I’ll give it to him. From the deck of the trawler I watched as he drank his can, then rowed back towards shore, to give the 2nd can of Coke to the little kid, my pal. But then the canoe stopped half way to the shore, and the teenage boatman drank the 2nd can of Coke, tossing the empty can over the side, to float ominously and obviously on the calm, still, idyllic waters of the lagoon. Red floating on turquoise. “Congratulations” said one of my colleagues beside me on the deck, “you’ve just brought Coca Cola garbage to paradise”.
The 3 days were quickly up. We’d drank from coconuts chopped off the trees, the nuts full of sweet refreshing milk, in complete contrast to the coconuts I’d won at the Fairgrounds of my youth which had a dribble of milk in them. I never knew coconuts could be so good, but then if that is one of the staples of your diet, as it was for the islanders, I’m sure the pleasure would soon wear off.
As time came to depart I stood talking with some youths, a fierce burning sensation on my foot. I look down and the red ants are swarming all over, biting me. I hobble quickly to the waters edge to wash my foot, the children laughing and adults smirking.
As we await our canoe for our departure my journalist colleague has a snooze on the sand, and I stand watching a woman chopping coconuts on the wet sand. A boy stands beside me with a bird on his arm, and another boy swings on a rope on a tree. Behind me there’s the usual gaggle of kids, interested but nervous. I’m looking out to sea and keeping an eye on this bird on the kid’s arm. There’s a picture to be had, but it hasn’t quite come together. The kid on the rope-swing keeps going, to and fro, out over the water, to and fro, to and fro. The black bird takes off, and I curse, a picture gone. But then moments later the boy comes back, with the bird standing tamely on his head. The kid on the swing is still going, to and fro, to and fro, at sea a canoe has launched and the boy with the bird on his head moves beside me, and it’s all come together.
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See my photographs of the Carterets Atoll here, and read another essay I wrote about the Carterets here, and listen to/watch a podcast here about the Carterets.