Island paradise Tuvalu can't escape real world

FUNAFUTI, Tuvalu - The 40-odd faithful, Bibles in hand, drive straight onto the prison grounds in pickup trucks. No problem: The fence, more a hint than a hindrance, reaches only halfway around the tiny compound.

They catch the convicts dozing in hammocks beside the beach, on a breezy mid-Pacific morning. In T-shirts and shorts, the six men stumble into place for impromptu prayers, listen politely to the congregation's encouraging words, reply humbly with words of thanks.

The good deed done, the inmates line up to shake their departing neighbors' hands - smiling matrons, little girls in white dresses, burly men in South Seas sarongs.

Then, back to the beach.

"We didn't even know they were coming," confides prisoner Lopatia Iacopo. "This is Sunday. It's our day of rest."

And this is Tuvalu (Too-VAH-loo), a place like no other.

A far-flung scattering of islands in a turquoise sea, Tuvalu is one of the planet's smallest and most remote nations, just west of the International Date Line, just south of the equator.

The 11,305 Tuvaluans live on nine islands and atolls comprising 129 islets and adding up to barely 10 square miles of dry land.

Tuvalu has few resources, erratic politics, mounting pollution and a growing fear that the sea, rising because of global warming, will someday drown its flat, palmy profile into oblivion.

"Tuvalu is a very small country with a high degree of vulnerability," the Asian Development Bank observed in a 2003 report. Even 60 years ago, James Michener found it unpromising. "A truly dismal island," the American author wrote of Funafuti, the main settlement, after passing through during World War II.

But bankers' bottom lines don't tell of the real Tuvalu, of churches full of song and weddings lasting days, of surprise visits to incarcerated sinners, of half an island turning out each dusk to play soccer or volleyball up and down the idle airport runway, their twice-a-week link to the outside world.

As for Michener's dismal time, he must have missed Pole O'Brien's dancing.

Old snapshots show that with her grass skirt and Polynesian beauty, the local nurse charmed American GIs at native performances in 1942-43. Today at 82, shrunken and an invalid, this Irish trader's grandchild knows her islands, in a world full of strife, are still special.

"The people are happy," she says. "If you look at them, you can see it in their happy, smiling faces."

The former Ellice Islands colony gained independence from Britain in 1978 and dubbed itself Tuvalu, "Eight Together" in Tuvaluan, signifying the eight main settlements.

Its assets: less than $1-million in cash and a hand-me-down British ship to link the widely separated atolls.

The Cold War saved them. In the mid 1980s, the Soviet Union offered aid money for fishing rights. To keep Moscow out, Australia, New Zealand and Britain quickly financed a Tuvalu Trust Fund of $18-million. Those investments, mostly in Australia, prospered and topped $50-million last year, even with regular Tuvalu government withdrawals.

Tuvaluans subsist in traditional ways: men in little skiffs fishing for tuna; families cultivating breadfruit and pulaka, a taro-like plant; coconut harvested to export its oil.

The islands have found new revenue sources. Brightly hued Tuvaluan postage stamps bring in steady income from collectors. The sale of fishing rights to Japan, the United States and other tuna-loving nations brings in even more.

Tuvalu also relies on direct foreign aid. Japan recently built a new hospital on Funafuti, and the Australians put in a landfill to begin cleaning up piles of island garbage that have nowhere to go.

Taiwan rewards Tuvalu for its diplomatic recognition, a tiny boost in Taipei's rivalry with mainland China. It just built government offices for Tuvalu - a modest three-story center, but still an outsized presence on slender Funafuti, just 7 miles long and 600 yards of sand, coral and hardy pandanus trees at its widest.

"We've been trying from the start to hold down costs and maximize our economy," Parliament member Amasone Kilei said. "Let me assure you, it has been very, very difficult."

Kilei, from outlying Nui atoll, led an opposition bid last year to bring down Prime Minister Saufatu Sopoanga's government, the latest in a series of political scuffles that gave Tuvalu four prime ministers in three years. The square-jawed Sopoanga, an ex-civil servant, survived by delaying a Parliament session until he could woo a Kilei supporter away.

Tuvalu faces a serious challenge: The sea is encroaching, apparently because of climate change. Sopoanga's government hopes to arrange contingency evacuation plans with New Zealand, but Tuvaluans are torn.

Life in Tuvalu revolves around the Anglican-descended Church of Tuvalu; the simple fusi co-op stores that anchor each district; the local maneapa pavilions where ample ladies, hair crowned with flowers, play gin rummy into the evenings.

Tuvalu's starry evenings are peaceful. "Even the drunks are quiet," Pole O'Brien's husband of 58 years, William Ben, says.

But if the night doesn't disturb the peace, the thought of the rising sea does.

"I'd like to see them move to a safe place," Lototele Malie, 75, says of his family as he watches waves lap up just yards from his simple concrete home.

"No," says daughter-in-law Pelise Malie, 25. "We love our country. We want to stay."

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