ConcertinaChap wrote:tea for two wrote:I would love to listen to these Kirimati Island songs if you think the island inhabitants would permit us to listen to them.
If the songs are private to the inhabitants then I understand respect their privacy.
Likewise. I also would very much like to hear them.
Here's a depressing comment from Wikipedia about the island (Kirimati is part of the Kiribati Islands): Kiribati is expected to be the first country to lose all its land territory to climate change. In June 2008, the Kiribati President Anote Tong said that the country had reached "the point of no return." He added, "To plan for the day when you no longer have a country is indeed painful but I think we have to do that."
CC
When I was there (for a couple of years) there was one Hotel on the island. It had been the headquarters of the British Officers in the late 1950s when they assembled and exploded Atom Bombs in the remote south of the island. The troops had to build a port, with pontoons, etc, to unload their equipment, Then they built a road stretching the whole length of the island. They needed to build accommodation for the troops, and for the officers, as well as an open-air cinema, a Church, and games facilities. The Hotel was called the Captain Cook Hotel. Near the end of the project, I was the only Guest at the Hotel when Anote Tong arrived. Then, as now, your minimum stay on the island was seven days, because that's the frequency of flights. I dined with Prime Minister Tong every evening for a week, and it was apparent then that he had a great fear that the island would be lost to the sea. The highest point on the island is 17 feet above sea level. He also talked about plans to modernize Kiribati as a nation, and Kiritimati as an Island. Tony Blair was UK PM and it was he who demanded the island be finally cleaned up, and all traces of the Nuclear Weapons testing activities be removed. The only trace of any radioactivity on the entire island (and we really did search hard) was the luminous dials on the military equipment neatly parked up in endless rows amid the salt brush in isolated and dried up lagoons. Asbestos was freely used in those days (brake and clutch linings, building materials, laundry boiler lagging, etc, and it was this material that posed the logistical problems. Every scrap was bagged, removed, and dealt with back in the UK.
I'm digging out some of the recordings I made. I won't add to any mixing or treatment I made on the island, and I'll provide links to la couple of them for anyone interested.
