K is for Kiribati, the Pacific island atoll, home to approximately 90,000 people.

It was a Friday night, about 7pm Japan time, when the call came. It was my picture editor boss at Greenpeace, calling with an assignment from a few time zones away. “Can you get to Kiribati by Monday?” was what he wanted to know. “Kiribati? Eh… once I find it on a map I’ll tell you” was my response, having no idea where Kiribati was and how far it would be to go.

Quick bit of research later and it was all obvious. It wasn’t so far, but it was remote. Monday, 3 days away. Could it be done? I spent most of the evening checking obscure airline flight timetables, if I can get to here, I can get to there, ah but then there’s no flight to here, but if I go here and then there, then I could get the flight to there. All evening. But finally I discovered I could get there by Monday pm, if I left the next day.

So the next morning, I’m up and into town with all my gear/bags, and into my trusty travel agent. After the shock of hearing I wanted to go to Kiribati today, the same day, it takes the girl an hour to work it all out on her computer, and then she gets to the price, and she pauses. She rechecks her calculator. She looks up, and tells me the price. It wasn’t cheap. It was shockingly not cheap. I’ll have to make a phone call I tell here, and I call my boss, getting him up in the middle of the night in Europe. I tell him the price, he whistles, and says he’ll have to make a call. I wait, then he calls back, “Jeremy it’s 3am, I can’t reach anyone, just do it”.

Later that day at Narita airport, Tokyo, the whole plan with the most expensive plane ticket I ever bought nearly unravels when I find out I’m meant to have an Australian visa but I don’t have one. “But my Queen is their Queen, we used to own Australia” buys me no luck, until someone tells me a nearby counter will sell me a visa.  Finally, off I go, to Kiribati, via Brisbane, via Honiara, via Marshall Islands and one or two other places I’ve forgotten. Three days, 5 flights, up down, up down. Check in ladies questioned the weight of my bags, I’m told to unpack, I unpack, and then when she says ok, fine, I slip it all back into my bag.

I’m going to shoot photographs of king tides on Kiribati, naturally occurring high tide phenomena which occasionally flood the low lying islands.  My client, Greenpeace, whilst acknowledging the natural element of these tides, wants to use the images to show the effects global warming and rising sea levels would have on such low lying atolls and nations. The king tide hits the atoll for three days, the middle day being the highest tide.

The flying is tough, lots of stop overs, off the plane, back on again, finally, we begin our descent out of the heavens down into Kiribati. I glimpse from the plane window, through the clouds, a sliver of green running across the sea into the distance, it’s incredibly narrow, and looks vulnerable, for a moment I’m not sure about this assignment. But I shoot the image, it looks beautiful and I love it to this day.

On the flight I’ve made pals with some others going all the way. These new friends are met at Tarawa airport by a colleague, and they kindly offer me a lift into “town”. We’re in the car, leaving the hut they call an airport, past the pigs, and palm trees, “Where are you from?” the colleague asks me, and laughs when I say “Scotland”. She turns to look at me, “ah, one of your fellow countrymen is here just now. Billy Connolly”.  In the passenger seat I look out the window and groan. Of all the atolls in all the seas he had to walk into mine.

The hotel is basic, but fine, not the worst. The sunset oil painting on the bedroom wall is no masterpiece, but the mosquito mesh on the windows looks intact. The first evening I’m alone, a videographer colleague will arrive the following day. I have time to amuse myself, and head for the beach, to see the rising tides. The beach is about 15 feet from my room, I hope the tide doesn’t rise too much.

The island is green, lush, mud tracks. I make my way towards the water, and ask a family if it’s ok to use this track, they smile, it seems I can walk where I want, but it feels like I’m walking through their garden, they shrug. Some kids find me and tag along, chirping away in their local dialect. I chirp away in mine, we get along fine. They offer me strange fruits to eat, and I decline as it looks half rotten or half eaten, or both. A little girl plays by the water, another girl stands in her Eminem t-shirt, and I photograph them all. The sea doesn’t look so high, but it looks great, it feels great, it smells awful, the beach is alive with garbage. It all smells exotic, but the sky is great, I’m shooting and I’m happy.

Fifty metres away on the other side of the island and the sky is turning a bit of a stormy red, the sea seems a little rougher over this side, I shoot, then dine with my airline friends, the lobster is cheap and I find out why, it’s tough, having last seen the sea a long time ago. I turn in and go hunt mosquitos in my room.

The following day work begins, my colleague Neil arrives, we compare airline ticket prices and then set to work. We have a car and a third colleague, a colleague from the island, and we drive around looking for the King Tides. It’s still early for high tide, so we do interviews, we ask around, we talk to people about their island and sea levels. We meet a man who seems great for interviews but half way through great stories about plants dying and seas rising, he contradicts himself, or finds the real reason the crops are dying. It’s hard work, he’s lethargic, he has malaria.

We go to interview the Prime Minister or President, and we arrive unannounced at his house during working hours. But he’s not there, he’s gone fishing.

Our island colleague keeps telling us that there is another Greenpeace colleague here just now, but for some reason we don’t pursue the conversation.  Hours later, or perhaps the next day, we drive into a church compound and through the windscreen, across the car park coming towards me is the Greenpeace colleague, JC, a friend from a previous trip. “What are you doing here’s?” all around as we all meet, and laugh at the chance occurrence.

The day of the high king tides is upon us. It seems worse in the southern part of the island. We photograph as Tiaon Bwere rescues what he can from his humble shack home as the waves pound it to pieces. We photograph kids as the strong the waves hit the beaches, our island colleague tells us “these kids would run out to meet a tsunami”. There is some flooding, but it seems very dependent on geography and incoming wind and tides, the majority of the island escapes. We get the images we need, and then I have to edit and send by the slowest dial up modem we have in the hotel. A phone call is torturous, sending pictures even worse.

Later, at night we’re down on the beach, still looking for things to film. I see a man in the distance with a guitar it seems, I head off. And sure enough, Kairaoi Bateriki is playing his ukelele type instrument, he sings and the light fades. He doesn’t mind that a media crew has arrived from nowhere. Finally we chat and he tells us he was at home and was lonely, so he came to the beach to cheer himself up.

Another day, or perhaps it was the previous one (island life time scales become a blur), we decide to film and photograph men walking out in the lagoon looking for shellfish to supplement their income and diet. I stupidly leave me shoes on the shore and wade out in bare feet across razor sharp coral, teetering this way and that on my city boy soft feet, my cameras precariously dangling above the salt water. It’s bright, I have on my sunglasses and still I need to squint. It’s great.

The trip is nearing an end, the videographer leaves, hoping to convince the airline pilot to fly once over the island so he can shoot a generic shot. We watch the plane take off and it goes straight into the distance, he’s failed in his request we laugh. JC and I cruise around in the car, we head for the port. I want to shoot the kids in the water, but beside the port wall are two Range Rovers, with Rich People in yachting clothes standing around. I get out, dangling in cameras, and shoot a little, ignoring the Rich People. In the distance I see the yacht, the yacht that for the past days I’ve been told about constantly, the yacht that belongs to Pamela Stephenson and Billy Connolly. As I return to my car I realise Pamela Stephenson is sitting in the Range Rover, her Yachty Rich People friends have circled her car thinking I’m paparazzi come to pap her. I walk past non-plussed. They watch me silently, the only “white people” around and we have an instant mistrust and dislike for each other.

At night we drive back up the island, it’s black out apart from the light of our headlights. From nowhere a piglet runs out from the bush, I hit the breaks, the breaks screech, but not as loudly as the screech from the piglet as I whack it and drive over it. The screams from the roadside tell me what I already know, that I hit it. My island Colleague tells me “go, go, go, don’t stop”. In the confusion and the heat of the moment I drive. We should have stopped and compensated the family, but our Island Colleague prefers us to just go.

The trip is finished, a quick three days in low lying paradise full of poverty. I ask my hotel to take me to the airport, they tell me the plane is leaving within the hour, not later as I imagined. They drive me at high speed to the shack of an airport. I sit in the departure lounge and discuss island life with an American businessman. Inevitably the conversation turns to the island’s most famous guest of the week, Billy Connolly. At that moment the door opens and in he comes, all stripey pants, beard, hair and musical instrument. As he meanders around the small room he hears my Scottish lilt of an accent, and his head whips round, his hair whipping all those it’s path. I ignore him, I don’t particularly like him, and as all Scottish press photographers know – he doesn’t like photographers. But this is too funny, all the way to the Pacific, to Kiribati, and he’s here, from Glasgow’s Govan shipyards, beside which I used to live, to here, Kiribati airport departure shack. I think about what to do, shall I ignore him , or shall I speak to him ?

The plane departure is called, boarding will commence, Billy Connolly strides out across the sun baked tarmac, I walk beside him. I decide to put away my prejudices and talk to him, I think to myself you never know when you might have to meet him and photograph him in the future, and it’d be good to have this momentary Kiribati meeting to discuss. “Mr. Connolly, hi, I thought I’d say hello as I come from Govan also…”. He turns “OH IS THAT SO?” he bellows in his Scottish lilt of an accent, and so it goes, we talk, we discuss why we’re there, we climb the steps of the plane, I go to my seat, he to his. The plane propellers roar into life, and we leave Kiribati, the fragile strip of land still lays low in the water. It has survived the king tides, and thankfully, it has survived Billy Connolly.