“While in Kiribati, I wanted to see the house where Ioane Teitiota had spent his last four years on the crowded capital island of Tarawa. I knew it was in the village of Abarao, and I had the name of a sister-in-law. I arrived just before sunset and started asking for her with the help of a translator. Villagers pointed to a small woman holding a young child in her arms. It was hot. Mosquitoes were beginning to swarm. She was wary of the strangers, but led me through a warren of thatch-roofed huts. The family home stood on the water’s edge, its back to the ocean; it was elevated by mounds of sand piled up against a shoulder-high sea wall. Waves lapped below. Living on a narrow strip of…
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Foreign Policy (Digital) - 1 Issue, January - February 2015