Tarawa, Kiribati

December 8, 2004

Checking In

The usual procedure for a yacht upon arrival in a new country involves clearing in with Customs, Immigration and Quarantine. The same rules and controls apply as if you were arriving by plane. In ‘civilized’ countries, crew is confined to the boat until the officials have completed their inspection, which may take half a day or more. The Quarantine officials are the first to board, ensuring you are not bringing in communicable diseases, or plants, animals, bugs, fresh fruits, etc. that might endanger the local ecosystem. Customs are interested in drugs, alcohol, guns and other contraband.

Many of the island countries we visit in the Pacific have a pretty relaxed attitude to checking in, and some of the officials even complete the process in their office. Immigration, for example – probably figure it unlikely that a yachtie would jump ship without detection on an atoll barely a mile long. This is not to say the process is any faster.

In Kiribati, the procedure is to radio ahead and arrange for a boarding party. You anchor, pick the officials up in your dinghy and go through the paperwork on board. Our friends on Tauranga had arrived before us, and found the phone system was down which meant they had to go ashore to round up the boarding party. They kindly checked that it would be OK for us to be cleared on the weekend.

When we arrived on Saturday, Radio Tarawa informed us that her phone was still out of order and so she was unable to get the boarding party for us until Monday. We knew that customs were expecting us. Reasoning with the woman in charge of facilitating our check in was impossible. The universal answer to any question in Polynesia is ‘yes’ which can be misleading to the unsuspecting traveler. So after a few minutes of polite but unfulfilling conversation we gave the universal answer and planned our own check in procedure.

Rob went in to the Customs dock, found the man in charge, who agreed to come out and give us our clearance. But as soon as he saw Moonbeam, our dinghy, he decided that actually the paperwork could be completed just as well on the dock. This has been our experience many times, and speeds up the processing considerably. The islanders are reluctant to lower their large frame into our tiny and apparently unstable dinghy. He told us not to bother with Immigration or Quarantine until Monday, but it would be OK for us to go ashore in the meantime.

The Quarantine office here is down a little track behind some pig pens. The pig was the only one home when we visited on Monday morning – a huge guy (a good 9 feet long) with so many rolls around his face it was hard to find eyes or snout. We wondered if his legs would even hold him or if he just lay permanently in the shade of the big breadfruit tree, which only barely covered him. Oh well, we weren’t sick and we’d eaten all the fresh stuff anyhow.

Off to Immigration, at the other end of the island. We jumped on the local bus, a minivan packed with all manner of humanity, driving at breakneck speed, passing everything on the narrow causeway, with music blaring at ten decibels. The Immigration office is a new air conditioned building - Bliss! We waited happily while the officer in charge riffled through drawers and cupboards. We could tell by the look on his face and the number of times he checked the contents of the same drawer that he could not find the forms. Eventually he went down the back of the office and sat heavily in a chair across the desk from someone who was apparently his superior, the look of failure wracking his whole body. They discussed the situation for a time, and eventually the young man returned, bucking himself up as best he could to deliver the news – they have no forms. He showed us one that had been completed by another yacht, indicating they needed one like this. I helpfully suggested we write out the information required for him on a piece of paper. We always carry a supply of our ‘crew list’, something we have typed out with the boat and crew particulars, which looks semi official. We added the other information required to this and presented it. By now the young fellow was relegated to some other duty and we had the officer in charge looking after us. He made a show of checking it all, asked us all the same questions that we had already provided written answers to, and stamped our passports as loudly as possible. We were in!

Still no sign of the Quarantine officer. Tuesday morning we tried again. The door was open, and there was a young man dishing out rat poison from a large drum using a cotton glove. Once the lucky customer had ambled off, he turned to us and we explained we needed to check in. A slightly worried look came over his face, he asked us to wait five minutes and disappeared at a trot down the road. We were left in the now unattended office with the rat poison.

The irony of the situation is that the last time we were here, four years ago, the Quarantine official insisted we have a ‘Derating Certificate’, documentary evidence that our boat had been inspected and all pests had been eradicated. Since we didn’t have one of these, we were charged $30 to have one prepared, although nobody actually visited our boat.

Fifteen minutes passed. The elephant pig was still under the breadfruit tree, so I went over to look at him and discovered behind him was a row of chickens in wire cages. I needed eggs, so presented the lady of the house with my carton and she collected up a dozen right from under the chickens. The whole scene seemed slightly incongruous, being that the Quarantine office is part of the Ministry of Health, particularly since the air was buzzing with clouds of flies attracted to the livestock. Eventually the fellow returned, to tell us the Quarantine officer was not there. He did not speak much English. After some moments he got the message that we were not going to leave, and disappeared again in the other direction. This time he returned with a woman who spoke English. She asked what it was we needed, so we explained we had been in Tarawa four days and wished to get our Quarantine clearance. I did not point out that any communicable diseases we carried would have been having a field day by now. She told us this boy was here doing work experience and could not help us, and the man in charge was down at the other end of the island. Could we come back. We politely explained we were leaving Tarawa this morning for another island so no we could not. Could we go look for him? Right! Take the bus down there and start searching – a good way to kill the morning. We stood our ground, explaining that we needed to leave now, not this afternoon. She said we would have to fill out forms. Yes, that’s fine. But of course nobody knew which forms or where they were so we once again presented our crew list, this time writing ‘Quarantine Declaration’ on the top, adding a sentence about no pests, animals, plants, etc. We suggested they take this and give it to the Quarantine officer, and that we would return for our clearance when we come back in a few weeks from the other island. Reluctantly, they accepted our form so we hurried off leaving them to work it out for themselves.