(CNN)Our ship's crew brings ashore a barrel of iced drinks.
The atoll's children don't care about the refreshments.
They scoop out the barrel's ice cubes and cradle them with wonderment like diamonds. The youngest shovel them into their pockets.
Living without refrigeration and other modern essentials such as the Internet and cell phones is a way of life in remoter parts of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).
Yet it's not necessarily a choice the younger generation is putting up with.
They're turning their backs on traditional life among FSM's smallest atoll populations.
ADVERTISING
Nukuoro Atoll
Baseball cap tilted down to shield his eyes against the fierce western Pacific sunshine, Mayor Senard Leopold waits on Nukuoro Atoll's porcelain-white beach to greet our ship.
I'm aboard an expedition cruise vessel, Silver Discoverer, with 60 other passengers taking a 17-day voyage across FSM.
Few ships ever cross this watery nation of 607 islands.
Our traverse takes us from FSM's southernmost outpost north of Papua New Guinea to the westernmost tip of the Caroline Island chain to Palau.
Nukuoro is a necklace of tiny flat islets circling an emerald-green lagoon so clear the corals leap out in HD quality.
Islanders get their food from fishing and tending taro crops.
Coconut fiber is used to thatch wooden huts and for weaving clothes.
It's self-sufficiency learned across generations.
Population drain
Mayor Leopold explains Nukuoro is FSM's smallest distinctive language group.
Just 210 islanders remain and more than half their population now live away from the atoll.
"Those who remain are mainly middle-aged adults or schoolchildren," he says.
"We have elementary school on Nukuoro, but after that older children must move away to attend high school on Pohnpei."
Pohnpei is one of FSM's larger developed islands with a population nudging 35,000.
"Once the children experience the conveniences of Western life they don't want to return. They stay on Pohnpei or go to study and work in Guam, Hawaii or West coast USA."
Leopold says population drain is a more immediate threat to them than sea level rise.
Kapingamarangi Atoll
A Zodiac inflatable boats enters shallow Kapingamarangi Lagoon.
It's the same deal on Kapingamarangi Atoll, 250 nautical miles away.
Between 1994 and a last census in 2010, Kapingamarangi's population fell by a quarter, to 350 individuals.
Kapingamarangi's inhabitants had no idea our passenger vessel was calling by.
Perhaps they were disappointed.
They'd been waiting for a delayed supply vessel for several months and had run out of coffee and sugar.
Valentino Tumakirewe is a somewhat laconic islander in his late 40s.
"I do a bit of fishing, grow some crops and drink palm wine most days," he says. "But not much else."
"There's not enough for young people to do here. My children have left."
He highlights another issue threatening Kapingamarangi's long-term sustainability.
"Everybody on the island is related and as people leave it gets harder to find a wife or husband."
(CNN)Our ship's crew brings ashore a barrel of iced drinks.
The atoll's children don't care about the refreshments.
They scoop out the barrel's ice cubes and cradle them with wonderment like diamonds. The youngest shovel them into their pockets.
Living without refrigeration and other modern essentials such as the Internet and cell phones is a way of life in remoter parts of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).
Yet it's not necessarily a choice the younger generation is putting up with.
They're turning their backs on traditional life among FSM's smallest atoll populations.
Nukuoro Atoll
Baseball cap tilted down to shield his eyes against the fierce western Pacific sunshine, Mayor Senard Leopold waits on Nukuoro Atoll's porcelain-white beach to greet our ship.
I'm aboard an expedition cruise vessel, Silver Discoverer, with 60 other passengers taking a 17-day voyage across FSM.
Few ships ever cross this watery nation of 607 islands.
Our traverse takes us from FSM's southernmost outpost north of Papua New Guinea to the westernmost tip of the Caroline Island chain to Palau.
Nukuoro is a necklace of tiny flat islets circling an emerald-green lagoon so clear the corals leap out in HD quality.
Islanders get their food from fishing and tending taro crops.
Coconut fiber is used to thatch wooden huts and for weaving clothes.
It's self-sufficiency learned across generations.
Population drain
Mayor Leopold explains Nukuoro is FSM's smallest distinctive language group.
Just 210 islanders remain and more than half their population now live away from the atoll.
"Those who remain are mainly middle-aged adults or schoolchildren," he says.
"We have elementary school on Nukuoro, but after that older children must move away to attend high school on Pohnpei."
Pohnpei is one of FSM's larger developed islands with a population nudging 35,000.
"Once the children experience the conveniences of Western life they don't want to return. They stay on Pohnpei or go to study and work in Guam, Hawaii or West coast USA."
Leopold says population drain is a more immediate threat to them than sea level rise.
Kapingamarangi Atoll
A Zodiac inflatable boats enters shallow Kapingamarangi Lagoon.
It's the same deal on Kapingamarangi Atoll, 250 nautical miles away.
Between 1994 and a last census in 2010, Kapingamarangi's population fell by a quarter, to 350 individuals.
Kapingamarangi's inhabitants had no idea our passenger vessel was calling by.
Perhaps they were disappointed.
They'd been waiting for a delayed supply vessel for several months and had run out of coffee and sugar.
Valentino Tumakirewe is a somewhat laconic islander in his late 40s.
"I do a bit of fishing, grow some crops and drink palm wine most days," he says. "But not much else."
"There's not enough for young people to do here. My children have left."
He highlights another issue threatening Kapingamarangi's long-term sustainability.
"Everybody on the island is related and as people leave it gets harder to find a wife or husband."
No comments:
Post a Comment