Tuvalu

Three days with Kieran in the least visited country in the world: nine atolls and reef islands, around 12,000 people, and a maximum elevation of about two metres.

Harry’s opening is that his geography teacher told him as a child that he’d never go there, because it wouldn’t be there. The video’s last interview is the prime minister giving the dates.

Obs: Tuvalu has no separate place page, for the same reason as Nauru — the capital, the runway, the prison and the beaches are all on one strip of the same atoll, and a place page would repeat this one. The boat trip to an outer island is a section below.

Getting there and getting around

• Visa-free for every nationality. He raises it specifically for people travelling on passports that are refused elsewhere: Tuvalu will have you, though it may be the most expensive holiday of your life.
• Flights are days apart. The aircraft they arrive on leaves and does not return for three days.
• There are no hotels. They stay in a private house.
• Australian dollars.
• Motorbikes are rented from somebody’s house, and hitching a lift is normal.
• Harry found the guide through a tour operator (Young Pioneer Tours, also used for Papua New Guinea) — which for a country with essentially no tourism industry is the practical route in rather than a recommendation.
• Their guide was working as a guide for the first time in her life, which describes the tourism industry better than any figure could.

The economy

• The .tv domain. Tuvalu licenses its country-code domain to the streaming industry, for around $8–10 million a year — roughly 10% of GDP (from video – unverified). Harry calls it pure luck, and adds that they deserve it, since tourism brings in so little.

Climate change

The reason the country is in the news, and the reason Harry went.

• Two metres above sea level, on atolls formed as volcanic islands subsided.
• Cyclones and spring tides already flood the islands — his framing at the top is that this is not a problem measured in decades.
• The prime minister’s figures: by 2050, more than half the land regularly inundated by tidal surge; fifty years after that, more than 90%.
• Fortifying the coastline has been the priority of this government and its predecessors, through an ongoing coastal adaptation project.
• Land is being reclaimed — dug and pumped into place, currently used to store cargo, with building due to start within a few years. Harry compares it to Dubai and immediately corrects himself: this one is life and death.
• What the prime minister asks other countries for: resources to build resilience — and visitors, on the grounds that it is hard to advocate for a place people have never seen and have no attachment to.
• How he holds both positions at once: Tuvalu is a deeply religious country that believes the land is God-given and will not be taken away — and, in the same answer, that they must be realistic, listen to the scientists and build the adaptation plans on the evidence.
• What people say themselves: everyone worries, the worry is for the next generation, and their guide says she isn’t planning to leave while most people already have.

The prison

Worth a section because of what it says about the society rather than the justice system.

• The gates are open. It is a free open jail, and permission from the government is needed to visit.
• Three inmates, and Harry cannot tell them apart from the officers.
• Some of the officers are related to the inmates, and everyone knows everyone. The officer’s framing: they aren’t bad people, they made mistakes and are learning from them.

Community and culture

• The runway is the national park. With no flights due, the whole airstrip fills up in the evenings — a traditional ball game where a hard ball is fired at a team who must work it back volleyball-style, with women singing behind them, and then football. Something like half the population is out there.
• Fatele, the traditional dance, and each of the eight islands has its own. What Harry rates is that the performance he sees is a rehearsal for a real celebration rather than a show staged for visitors.
• Extended families live in one house — grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins — sleeping in one room on mats.
• Things are made for family, not for sale. A man weaves a sleeping mat for his grandson; the house stands open at night because there is nothing to keep out.
• Education runs out locally: preschool on the outer islands, then the capital for secondary, and university abroad for some.

The outer island

Half an hour by boat from the capital, in the same atoll: no roads, no police, a couple of families, fewer than 100 people. Harry calls it the most beautiful place he has ever been.

Its history is the war: when the Japanese came, people fled here from the capital. He is told the Americans later took the capital and helped — and says on camera that he isn’t sure, and that history is written by the winners.

Food

His one flat criticism, and he gives it straight: the food is consistently bad, among the worst of any country he has been to. The exception is the meal cooked by a family — taro, fish and lamb.

Source

• The Least Visited Country in the World 🇹🇻 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9pZBk2Uiss