Tuesday, 21 March 2023 // Naked I-Matang Beach
6:17 AM
Paris
Kiritimati is so remote that sometimes the closest they are to other human beings is when the international space station is flying overhead.
Cargo ships come every three months, from Fiji on their way to Honolulu. You can’t run to target or Walmart or the Apple store. There are no movie, theaters, bowling alleys, no 24-hour convenience stores, no gas stations on every corner.
In spite of being so remote, and the fact that I am currently living in the equivalent of a glorified tent, I still have access to battery-powered electricity to charge my phone. Iou and his wife listen to reggae on her telephone, while we eat, fish cooked straight on a grate over a fire of coconut husk, the fish caught only an hour earlier.
In London, when I asked what some kids were paying attention to in another room, hearing some kind of raucous music that I knew was not Kiribati, I was told they were on TikTok. And I laughed, along with the other adults, laughing as they would anywhere across the United States, seeing their kids engaged in technology.
I’ve only been to London at night, and know there are street lights there. I will be in Poland on Wednesday night, and find out if there are any kind of street lights there.
I interrupt my dictation from behind a wall of banana fronds that slow the incessant wind, that I may record my voice clearly, when I spy Iou and his wife, Teraibwebwe, 50 yards away, walking on the beach towards me. The sun has not even cracked the horizon. It’s not even 6:30 AM, and they look like two lovebirds walking so close to each other, he in a green, short sleeve football jersey, she wearing a green shawl over her T-shirt that reads BEAUTY SLEEP.
I walk towards them and hear Iou call “good morning, Marc!“ I see that he has a bucket with fish. He has been up since 3 AM fishing. He told me he could not sleep. So they both woke up, and went out on the beach, and now he has breakfast And most likely lunch, as he caught four yellow snapper. With only a huge roll of line on a giant spool and a lure. He places the spool on a stick in the sand, and tosses the hook out into the sea. And waits. This is fast food.
Later that day. 3:11 PM
Poland
I’m naked. That’s not something I often announce to anybody, but my closest friends and even then, I limit that to two or three. I’ve been known to garden in Texas in hat and flip-flops, due to the cruel summer heat.
But this is the kind of naked everyone longs for. Maybe not everyone, but if you are one that likes to go to the beach, it doesn’t get any better than this. I wish I could tell you my exact latitude, but I have no GPS, no signal of any kind here other than to say, I am halfway along the diagonal slope of the elbow of the island, where Poland lies, that angles northwest to southeast.
I needed a break, a respite, from the attentions and hospitality of the locals. They have been overwhelmingly kind almost to a person. I just had a lunch of fresh fish and crab both harvested today. I wasn’t in the mood for lunch, but it was offered. And sitting there in the Catholic mwaneaba, of course, it was the right thing to do. Zero seasoning. It was delicious and tasted of the ocean.
I have done some photography, photos of the men, women, family photographs, my grandfather took back in 1916, 1917. I was even able to hook up my Australian electrical adapter and actually plug in my computer for the first time in days, that I may show photographs to the people who are so curious.
Then I did a sketch and watercolor of the church here in Poland, Saint Stanislaus. Stanislaus was the name of Fr. Rogier’s brother, and I’m guessing that’s why he picked that Saint for the name of the lagoon. The church was built in 1995, and for all I know, the first Catholic church in Poland. While painting and sketching, I was surrounded by at least a half a dozen children, or more, and several men.
I plan to scout out some more locations for sketches or paintings by taking photographs as references, but I really had to pee.
So I rode out of town a little bit. As I headed south east, I could make out a faint break from the road in the distance, surely a path that led to the ocean. I was not disappointed.
And that’s what led to being naked. In Texas the water on the coast is like bathwater. Really too hot to enjoy. The water off the coast of Maine is “refreshing.“ Which means there are only a handful of my friends, who actually enjoy going in the water there. But this is different. This is the tropics. This is a degree or so above the equator. This is where at 3:20 PM my shadow is still almost beneath me, at my feet. This is where I find unblemished beach. No trash, as seen along the shores of much of London and Tabwakea.
Here the beaches are perfect, the water is the color you see in all the glossy travel magazines, all the TV shows and movies that highlight the tropics. Translucent turquoise, at the moment coming in via the widest of whitecaps in low waves. The beach, the soft sand, almost like talcum powder, leads into water that, at hip-deep, there may be coral or sand beneath your feet. Find a patch of sand and sit down with the water up to your neck, and it is magic.
You would be naked too.
Iou's kitchen and dining room.
Iou's kitchen, with a pot of giant clams on the fire. Most homes’ kitchens are similar, with coconut husks as the perfect fuel.
Rude sketch of one the traditional way to fish from shore: huge reel on rod in sand, another rod acting as indicator when fish is caught, and line and bait (or lure) out to sea. Pretty simple. This allows the fisher to not only have a few lines in the water, but also get other things done, instead of waiting on lines.
Yellow snapper, caught somewhere between 3am and the crack of dawn.
Pretty certain that St. Stanislas Bay — which existed long before this version of Poland’s Catholic church was built in 1995 — was named in honor of the patron saint of Fr. Rougier’s brother, Paul-Stanislas Rougier.
There is no name to this beach, so as it is at the end of the sandy road that leads from the main street, where the trading store is on the corner, I’ve deemed it Trading Store Road Beach. I also deemed a stretch of beach, in the offing, with an even BETTER, and just as pristine stretch of white sand Naked I-Matang Beach. Legend has it, that if one goes to the shore nearing sunset, at the tail-end of a sweaty day, one may spy a naked I-Matang parading along the shore, and into the turquoise waters.