Tuvalu

Tuvalu’s nine reef islands and atolls lie across the western Pacific, none rising far above the high-tide mark, and form an independent constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth. The name means ‘eight standing together’. Funafuti, the main atoll, is a thin necklace of islets around a broad lagoon, and its airstrip doubles as a football pitch when no plane is due. Islanders dig pits through the coral to raise pulaka, a giant swamp taro, and king tides seep up through the ground itself.

Polynesian settlers came mostly from Samoa and Tonga, though Nui’s people speak a language close to that of Kiribati. The Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña saw Nui in 1568. In 1861 a drifting canoe brought Elekana, a Cook Islands deacon, to Nukulaelae, and Samoan pastors spread Christianity from there; in 1863 Peruvian slavers carried off many islanders. Britain joined the islands, then the Ellice Islands, to the Gilberts in 1892; they separated in 1975 and became independent as Tuvalu in October 1978.

Each island keeps its falekaupule, a council of elders meeting in the maneapa, the open-sided community hall, where fatele dances build from slow chant to fast, pounding song. Te ano, a team game played with a pandanus ball, survives beside football, and the Church of Tuvalu draws most islanders on Sunday. Tuna fishing licences, a trust fund set up with donors in 1987, stamps and the wages of seafarers trained on Amatuku for foreign merchant ships keep the state going.