4

At the Ministry

It all started when Nina and I left two years earlier for that trip through Tonga's neighbouring island state of Fiji. We wanted to get out of the old world for a while, out of everyday life - a wish that many people have. Some fulfil this dream directly after graduating from high school, first go on journeys before "the seriousness of life" begins. With us this was not possible, although we already dreamed of paradise during our school days. As soon as she had her diploma in her hand, Nina threw herself into her studies and I started with civilian service and training.

Time passed, it was a good time, but at some point it was clear: If we didn't dream for a lifetime, but really wanted to see our paradise, then it was now or never. We did not suspect at all that this first adventure would become something that we understand today as our personal way of life.

First we moved to Fiji's northeast, to a small island with many hills, streams and seven villages. We found a place to stay in a bay on the edge of a settlement and tried to integrate ourselves into the village and South Sea culture. The islanders welcomed us warmly. And finally the doom took its course, because one day we met Jonny.

Jonny is a tanned and cheerful mid-forties man from South Africa who came to Fiji to enjoy life - and he said: "There's this island, so you know, it's a real insider tip."

We listened curiously, and the more Jonny told us, the more fascinated we were. It was a desert island. The desert island, thirty nautical miles away from the next inhabited. In the middle of the ocean, in the middle of nowhere. A small grain of sand on the nautical chart, not even noted on most charts. Unattainable to anyone who doesn't know it exists. It is about four hundred by one hundred meters large; around the wooded interior of the island there is a sandy beach that is as wide and long as protein in a fried egg.

The beauty of the island dazzled us, its unspoiled beauty took our breath away. Without talking about it, it was clear to both of us that this was exactly what we were looking for. The loneliness. Even though both of us are not misanthropes, but on the contrary love and need our friends - the thought of being only a couple for a while appealed to us. Would we get to know each other anew if we had nothing and no one else to distract us from each other? Would it strengthen our relationship?

When we first felt the warm white sand of the island under our feet, we felt like we were the only people in the world - the most beautiful place you can find. He seemed so surreal, so incredibly perfect. So that almost today we can't believe we really were there. That it wasn't imagination. It was real.

This island looks as if a higher power had arranged each grain of sand separately, using each coral in the turquoise lagoon separately. And we suddenly got the chance to live there for a short time. Permission to live there. Our entry into paradise. We couldn't help ourselves.

Jonny referred us to the owner's son, a New Zealander, and he was very happy about our interest. He never thought about renting the island and the beach house on it, he said, but that sounds good. "Can you deal with yourselves?" he asked. Could we? Of course we could!

In this island idyll there was no Western luxury as we know it. We had a compost toilet consisting of a plastic barrel and a wooden frame around it. But there was a completely different kind of luxury: we had time, infinite time. For all daily things in life and above all for each other. I think that was what planted the longing in us and allowed it to germinate, until it grew into this unconditional need that no longer made us happy at home.

It would have been obvious for us to go to that island again the second time, we had all the contacts, but there was a problem for which we simply could not find a solution: In principle, Fiji does not grant permission to import dogs from Europe. No special permit either. Don't argue. But it was clear to us that we would not leave our dog behind.

So we came to the kingdom of Tonga. Located right next to Fiji, the islands are even more remote than their neighbouring country, which has become more touristy in recent decades, according to the travel guide.

The nice gentleman from the quarantine station helped us right away with our special dog import request. And: In relation to inhabited islands there are disproportionately many uninhabited ones in Tonga. About thirty settled, 340 lonely - hardly imaginable that we should not find anything there.

Weeks before the disastrous ferry trip to the island, I visit a backyard office belonging to the Ministry of Lands, Survey, Natural Resources and Environment. It's lunch break and smells like chicken-flavored maggine noodles when I come in. The employees pour them into coffee cups and stir until the noodles are soft enough.

Richard, head of the Geographic Information System subdivision at the Ministry, interrupts the matter, which demands all his attention, rises from the desk chair and smiles as he approaches me to shake my hand. He wears Tonga business attire: a black wrap skirt, the obligatory pandanus mat tied around it, a black shirt and wide leather sandals. He seems cozy and polite, but after listening to my request he will in all likelihood declare me crazy.

"How can I help?" he asks and looks at me expectantly through his angular glasses. Palangis are usually standing in front of the Immigration Office one street down because of visa issues, a building that would collapse if there weren't so many passports piled up in it. Or they could make it into the Ministry of Lands antechamber to pay fees for leased land. But here, in the corrugated iron-covered annex behind the main building, no one ever comes.

"It's a little complicated," I say. "I can come back after lunch too."

"No, no, that's all right," Richard replied, rolling an office chair towards me and asking me to sit opposite him.

I take my seat thankfully and describe my concern to him. "My wife and I are looking for a suitable desert island for us," I say. "I need an overview and good maps."

I'm surprised Richard doesn't react in astonishment. It only takes him two seconds to process what I want. "And what are you going to do there?" he asks.

"Whatever most Tongans do," I answer. "We like the simple life on the islands, want to grow our own garden and go fishing once in a while."

Richard smiles at me and takes a breath. "Don't plant marijuana," he warns, "and I don't know if he means that as a joke. He leads me to a table in the corner of the office where cards in DIN A1 format are spread out. Some show large islands in detail. Others show whole groups. Richard pulls down one of the cardboard rolls lying on a cupboard. He opens the lid and pulls out a card showing the entire Ha'apai island group. It is located in the middle of the kingdom and is particularly isolated and little developed. Just what we're looking for. The individual archipelagos are scattered so far that one might think that someone dropped sugar sprinkles on the map and let them roll. The enormous expanse of the ocean is the all-dominant element. The pure land mass in the South Seas makes up one percent, the rest of the surface is water - it is as large as the surface of the moon.

Richard's map shows the distances from island to island - the map material that we got before at the tourist office was useless for us. There are four islands which we have noticed and about which we would like to learn more. With days of internet research we tried to gain as many impressions as possible. Google Earth hardly works because of the bad internet connection in Tonga, but to some islands we find descriptions of sailors who anchored in front of them on their journeys through the archipelago. The contributions are sometimes several years old. In most cases it is difficult to obtain up-to-date information. With luck we come across photos that sailors put online after their trips and learn about fruits growing on the islands and animals living there.

On one of them, very distinctive by smooth, big boulders on the beach, a Tongan hermit allegedly lives several months a year with his pigs. I found out about it at a beach bar in the evening.

"Is it still like that?" I ask Richard.

"As far as I know, yes," he says.

Unfortunately, this means that Klein-Bora-Bora, as sailors call the island, is out of the question. Nina and I, a kind of twins, don't want to disturb a hermit. The island would have had another advantage: it is more than ten meters high at one point - a good protection against a tsunami.

This is also the view of Richard, who shows me a map showing the development of a tsunami in September 2009 on the Niuas, the two northernmost islands of Tonga. The wave had cost the lives of dozens of people.

"The tsunami danger is considered to have increased in the next few years," says Richard. I flinch. It is clear that there are tsunamis and that they are dangerous, but I hear for the first time that the probability of being caught by one is increased immediately.

"You have to make sure that you get all the official warnings, no matter how," Richard recommends and looks at me with insistence. I'm nodding; I'm certainly not taking the risk lightly.

Two more islands are eliminated; they are too small for us. You can hardly walk a circle on them, and after a few hours we would go to the throat.

In the Ha'apai group, however, there is still a small chain of islands that could fit. An island in the very south is the largest, one and a half kilometres long and three hundred metres wide. Unfortunately, Richard can't give me any information about her. "I've...