Kiribati

No other country reaches into all four hemispheres: Kiribati’s islands straddle the equator, from the Gilberts in the west through the Phoenix group to the Line Islands far to the east. Kiritimati is the coral atoll with the largest land area on earth. Most land barely clears the high tide, and fresh water comes from a thin lens beneath the sand. In 1995 the country moved the date line east, so all its islands share one calendar day.

Voyagers settled the Gilberts in the deep past. The name Kiribati renders ‘Gilberts’, after Thomas Gilbert, a British captain who sailed through in 1788. Britain ruled the islands from 1892, and phosphate mining from 1900 stripped Banaba, a raised island to the west; in 1945 most Banabans were moved to Rabi Island in Fiji. In November 1943 American marines took Betio, on Tarawa, from its Japanese garrison in one of the Pacific war’s bloodiest battles. Independence came in July 1979.

The maneaba, a great open meeting house, is where a village debates, feasts and dances, each family seated at its ancestral place. Dancers stretch their arms like the frigatebird on the national flag. Babai, a giant swamp taro, grows in pits dug down to the fresh water, and toddy is tapped from coconut flower stalks. Copra and seaweed are exported, licences for foreign tuna fleets fill much of the budget, and seafarers trained on Tarawa crew merchant ships and send wages home.