Rounded up 3.5 stars.

KIRR-E-BAS, the "ti" sound in I-Kiribati is always an "s" sound. Gonna learn you today.

As part of my ongoing read around the world project, this title was not my first choice - a white man gallivanting amongst the natives on remote island nation? Sounds like a problematic disaster waiting to be read. Unfortunately, I can only read English and Kiribati itself hasn't produced much in the way of accessible literature for people as limited as I am. So, with Troost we shall persevere.

The book opens with a self-deprecating look into why he moved to Tarawa, Kiribati for two years, comparing himself to unnamed memoirs of go-getters who "feel alive when [they are] nearly dead." Troost had no real answer for his journey across the world; he was a person who had Aged into Adulting without the requisite understanding of What Comes Next. "Like many highly educated people, I didn't have much in the way of actual skills." It is a little more self-aware than I was expecting, given the title. His girlfriend Sylvia was the real impetus - she was offered a position on the atoll; Troost came along as little more than a house-husband with vague ambitions to write a book.

He acknowledges that he was entirely unprepared for atoll living; he was imagining a tropical paradise and what he got was more along the lines of a very hot, very humid, very isolated place with very few options in, well, anything. It's obvious that he was often bewildered by the I-Kiribati and their culture, but it was tempered by a fairly heavy dose of respect for the people - if not always their customs. See: shitting in the ocean downstream from where he is swimming.

Troost mostly focused on things that affected day-to-day living in the atoll, like dog cannibalism and the bubuti, which was the cultural system of trading favor for favor whenever asked. Never being able to say no to a favor sounds like a goddamn nightmare. Even without my dirty capitalist upbringing, being beholden to anyone is not my cup of tea. Even the I-Kiribati are wary of it, hating being promoted because it means they have more to give. I-Matang (people who are not I-Kiribati) are allowed to refuse bubuti, but they are the only ones:

"[Airan, a young Australian-educated employee of the Bank of Kiribati] was, however, miserable. He had just been promoted to assistant manager.

"This is very bad," he said.
"Why?" I asked. "That's excellent news."
"No. People will come to me with bubuti. They will bubuti me for money. They will bubuti me for jobs. It is very difficult."

This system is why many governmental Kiribati positions remain in I-Matang hands. "Sylvia's presence ensured that the organization would not crumble under the demands of bubuti system, which is exactly what occurred when the only other international nongovernmental organization to work in Kiribati decided to localize. Its project funds were soon gobbled up in a flurry of bubutis and the organization dissolved."

Troost also commented on a broader political sphere, speaking of the colonialist history of the Pacific and the current issues plaguing the islands due to the Western world's complacency: "There was, it seemed to me, considerable dissonance between the health care concerns of westerners and the realities of the Pacific. Diarrhea and acute respiratory infections, for instance, killed nearly 10 percent of children under the age of five. But glamorous people don't die of diarrhea. Elizabeth Taylor doesn't hold fundraisers for people with the runs."

After two years, Troost and his girlfriend left Tarawa and tried to adjust back to the Western world, with its too many options and faster pace. They had a baby, but when the opportunity to go back to the Pacific arose, they jumped on it and brought him along. "A day might be wonderful or terrible, but it was never, ever boring. [...] I am quite likely the world's laziest adrenaline-junkie, and so living in Tarawa worked well for me. I didn't have to do anything. Shit just happened on Tarawa."