{"id":20848,"date":"2018-08-13T09:29:49","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T13:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/?p=20848"},"modified":"2021-04-19T11:17:32","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T16:17:32","slug":"the-island-of-fubar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/blog\/the-island-of-fubar\/","title":{"rendered":"The Island of FUBAR"},"content":{"rendered":"

All photos by Jack Wheeler.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"TheNauru<\/em>. Welcome to the world\u2019s smallest country \u2013 a tiny isolated rock in a remote part of the Pacific, right on the Equator, 8.1 square miles with 9,300 people living around its 10-mile circumference. No one lives in the interior and we\u2019ll soon find out why.<\/p>\n

Of all 193 Member States of the United Nations, Nauru is the smallest in population. Only Monaco (less than 1 square mile on the French Riviera) is smaller in area.<\/p>\n

I have been to every single one of those 193 UN countries, and I can confirm that Nauru is more FUBAR than any other.\u00a0Actually, that\u2019s an understatement.\u00a0You know what the acronym means, and Nauru takes it to a whole new dimension, a higher standard of\u00a0fubaredness<\/em>\u00a0than the rest of the world – which is unlikely to be surpassed in our lifetimes, if ever.<\/p>\n

Better get comfortable in your favorite chair with at least three fingers of your favorite adult beverage at the ready to get through this. You\u2019ll find it hard to believe, but this is a true story. Kafka himself couldn\u2019t have made it up, although he certainly would have relished it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll start with what Nauru unbelievably looks like. Note the green strip around the perimeter and the vast gray uninhabited interior.<\/p>\n

\"TheNauru is a coral outcrop built up over five million years on top of an ancient volcano summit that eroded to sea level. There\u2019s no lagoon, just the solitary island in the middle of a vast ocean.<\/p>\n

For those five million years, countless nesting birds pooped on the coral, depositing millions of tons of guano. Polynesians showed up in their outrigger canoes a couple of thousand years ago to eat the birds, fish, gather coconuts, and make war between the dozen clans they divided the island into.<\/p>\n

The Germans claimed the place in the 1880s and put an end to the inter-clan warfare.\u00a0The Brits stole the island from the Germans after World War I and began a mining operation of the island\u2019s interior, containing one of the richest and highest-grade deposits of phosphate in the world.<\/p>\n

This came to a halt when the Japanese seized the island during WWII but resumed after the war. Nauru was now a UN Trust Territory run jointly by the Brits, Aussies, and Kiwis \u2013 who were jointly stupid enough to grant Nauru full sovereign independence in 1968.<\/p>\n

When the Japanese surrendered the island at the war\u2019s end, there were less than 800 Nauruans left alive.\u00a0By 1968, there were still less than 2,000 \u2013 while agricultural production in both Australia and New Zealand had become dependent on Nauru\u2019s \u201csuperphosphate\u201d for the fertilizer making that production possible.<\/p>\n

Yet this tiny number of Nauruans somehow intimidated these huge countries into full sovereign ownership of the island and all phosphate production. Mining the phosphate had been hard labor-intensive work, chipping the solidified guano out of fossilized limestone coral pinnacles. Yearly production in the 50s and 60s was in the thousands of tons.<\/p>\n

The new Nauru government wasted no time in creating the government-owned Nauru Phosphate Company that went full-bore to produce as much phosphate as possible by strip-mining. Soon, Nauru was producing 1-2\u00a0million<\/em>\u00a0tons per year.<\/p>\n

During the 1970s and 1980s, Nauru was making $100-$200 million a year in phosphate profits, giving Nauruans the world\u2019s highest per capita GDP (over $50,000 per person per year, higher than any other country on the planet).<\/p>\n

For 30 years, from 1968 to 1998, Nauru produced 43 million tons of phosphate at a cumulative profit of $1.8 billion.\u00a0Yes, billion \u2013 for a few thousand people.\u00a0And they blew it all, every dime.<\/p>\n

Everyone had a brand-new car. Nauruans\u2019 favorite pastime was driving around the island \u2013 which takes about 20 minutes \u2013 over and over like a lab mouse running on a circular treadmill, while drinking Pale Blonde Aussie beer and throwing the empty cans out the car window.<\/p>\n

No one paid any taxes, everything was paid for by the government as Nauru became a total welfare state. Nauruans changed governments like musical chairs so that everyone was on the gravy train.<\/p>\n

Nauruans became fully sedentary.\u00a0Consuming enormous quantities of beer and rice, Nauruans became and still are the\u00a0most obese people on earth<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 it is astounding how fat they are \u2013 and have the world\u2019s highest rate of diabetes (e.g., 53% of Nauruan women over age 55 have diabetes).<\/p>\n

During Nauru\u2019s go-go days, the police chief bought himself a $200,000 yellow Lamborghini. Offloaded at the dock all shiny spanking new, the chief was the proudest guy on the island \u2013 until he tried to take it for a spin only to discover he was too fat to squeeze into it.<\/p>\n

Nauru\u2019s circular road was littered with car wrecks crashed by drunks. The politicians in charge of the Nauru Phosphate Trust Fund squandered incredible fortunes on expensive real estate buys they trashed, like office buildings in Australia, hotels on Waikiki in Hawaii, and the Grand Pacific in Suva, Fiji – then letting them go kaput.<\/p>\n

They spent millions on a play,\u00a0Leonardo (da Vinci) the Musical<\/a><\/em>, panned by critics and audiences as one of the worst in the history of theatre, and to which the entire cabinet and their families flew to London in their private jet for the disastrous debut.<\/p>\n

They insisted on having their own prestige airline, Air Nauru, with five Boeing 737s and two 727s flying routes all over the Pacific at 10-20% capacity.\u00a0Often, the president or one of his cronies would commandeer a plane ready to fly in order to take his family on a shopping spree in Hong Kong or Tokyo, leaving all the passengers and their luggage stranded on the tarmac. By 1990, Air Nauru was losing $100 million a year.\u00a0By 1996 it was down to a single 737.<\/p>\n

As phosphate production began winding down in the 90s, the politicians began borrowing against the trust fund to bankroll their lifestyle and the Nauru welfare state.\u00a0General Electric Capital Division lent them $236 million. Phosphate production fell off a cliff in 1998 and was down to almost zero in 2006.\u00a0GE foreclosed in 2004.\u00a0Air Nauru ceased operating in 2005 with its one plane seized by creditors.<\/p>\n

The state was so bankrupt it couldn\u2019t pay its satellite phone bills and lost contact with the world for several months.<\/p>\n

Today, Nauru is kept on life support through aid and handouts of various kinds from the governments of Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan.\u00a0Nauruans think the world owes them a living. Very few have any drive or incentive.\u00a0The population has quintupled since independence as Nauruan women have an average of 4 children \u2013 yet parents could care less if their kids go to school.\u00a0Truancy is rampant, with Aussie teachers here telling me their students have almost no desire to learn anything.<\/p>\n

People here are fatter than ever and dying like flies from diabetes, smoking, heart disease, and booze. Men die on average at age 56, women a few years later.\u00a0At least a quarter of Nauruan children are stunted from malnutrition, eating sugary junk food and white rice. Most Nauruans live in destitution. The island looks like Detroit in the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

There are no banks here or insurance companies.\u00a0There is no Nauru currency \u2013 the official currency is Australian dollars.\u00a0Every transaction is cash.\u00a0Almost all real jobs are done by expats, mostly from Australia or elsewhere in the Pacific like Tarawa or the Marshall Islands.<\/p>\n

Almost all businesses and shops, mostly tiny tin shacks, are run by Taiwan Chinese. Defunct Air Nauru has been restarted with one 737 bought as a gift from Taiwan.\u00a0It\u2019s so bad that airline rating sites like Skytrax don\u2019t even list it. Tourism is nil, as the only hotel (the Menem) is always fully occupied by Aussie and Kiwi social workers, who, with the government\u2019s constant power failures, are constantly going without electricity, showers, or flushing toilets.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s take a look at the Island of Fubar.\u00a0Remember I asked you to note the vast gray patch of the island in the picture above?\u00a080% of the island has been rubble-ized by phosphate strip mining, leaving countless stone coral pinnacles.<\/p>\n

Nauruans call this area \u201cTopside,\u201d and you have to see it to believe it.\u00a0Pinnacles up to 20 feet high as far as you can see.\u00a0It\u2019s a mind-boggling ecological catastrophe.\u00a0Topside \u2013 80% of Nauru \u2013 is utterly uninhabitable and always will be.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"TheNauru\u2019s beaches exist only at low tide and are also studded with coral pinnacles. They are natural formations but make the beaches jeopardous and unswimmable.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"TheThat beachfront home you see? Here it is close up. Completely trashed, it\u2019s not abandoned \u2013 people live here. I love the thoughtful touch of old blue jeans as window curtains.<\/p>\n

\"TheMost Nauruans live in trashed tenement homes.\u00a0Here\u2019s another \u2013 note the loving attention paid to front yard landscaping, given that this is a lush, tropical South Seas island:<\/p>\n

\"TheTrashed office buildings are everywhere also.<\/p>\n

\"TheThere\u2019s an idyllic lake called Buada Lagoon\u2026<\/p>\n

\"TheBut it\u2019s trashed too.<\/p>\n

\"TheThere\u2019s also the gigantic wreckage of the abandoned phosphate operation.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"TheRecently, however, it\u2019s been revived to extract \u201csecondary\u201d lower-grade phosphate. The enormous processing plant has been reopened.<\/p>\n

\"TheWith the emission of huge clouds of phosphate dust\u2026<\/p>\n

\"The…that everyone in Nauru\u2019s largest community of Aiwo below the plant has to breathe. Adding insult to injury, the government put up this hilarious sign in Aiwo.\u00a0Note the processing plant behind it.<\/p>\n

\"TheThere is no hope for Nauru, for it has passed the point of recoverability, of no return.\u00a0The bottom line is that there are countries for which there is no justification being sovereign UN Member Nations.<\/p>\n

The country of Nauru must soon cease to exist, with the island abandoned and its inhabitants taken in by the Aussies and Kiwis so Nauruan children can have a future with good education, good diet, and good job prospects. There is no hope for Nauru, but there must be hope for Nauruans as individual people.<\/p>\n

But for now and evermore, the Island of Fubar is one place you won\u2019t want to escape to.<\/p>\n

Upcoming Wheeler Expeditions \u2013 click for details on each:<\/strong><\/p>\n

September 13-October 2: Hidden Central Asia<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

October 8-October 18: Hidden Holy Land<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

November 3-November 10 & November 10-November 17: Himalaya Helicopter Expedition<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Click here to get advance notice of expeditions you can join & stunning photos of Once-in-a-Lifetime Adventures<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Jack Wheeler is the founder of\u00a0Wheeler Expeditions<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All photos by Jack Wheeler. Nauru. Welcome to the world\u2019s smallest country \u2013 a tiny isolated rock in a remote part of the Pacific, right on the Equator, 8.1 square miles with 9,300 people living around its 10-mile circumference. No one lives in the interior and we\u2019ll soon find out why. Of all 193 Member […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":366,"featured_media":20874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[451],"yst_prominent_words":[11584,11589,11587,11593,11591,2476,11590,2189,11583,11594,11597,11596,11588,11598,11585,11586,6577,11592,11595,3778],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/image1-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/366"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20848"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44626,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20848\/revisions\/44626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20848"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}