The Sex Lives of Cannibals

The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific is J. Maarten Troost’s account of his two years spent on the atoll of Tarawa in the Republic of Kiribati, a remote island nation located in the South Pacific. Despite the title, the book is not a sociological study, but a piece of (often comic) travel writing. Troost has explained that he intended the title to reflect the absurdity of his experiences in Tarawa. According to the author, “Anyone who’s picked up [The Sex Lives of Cannibals] figures out pretty quickly that it's just a fun yarn and not an academic treatise on the deviant mating rituals of faraway islanders.”

The book is set in the nineties. Having emerged from a graduate degree without a clear idea of what he wants to do with the rest of his life, Troost is more than happy to travel to Tarawa with his girlfriend, Sylvia, who has secured a two-year contract with the Foundation for the Peoples of the South Pacific. Troost imagines a tranquil island paradise, the perfect environment for him to write a literary masterpiece – but his romantic notions about Tarawa are dispelled when he arrives on the atoll. He spends the next two years adjusting to a culture that baffles and at times infuriates him, and a life of few creature comforts.

One of the main comic themes of the book is the ubiquity of the song “La Macarena” in Tarawa. It seems to be played everywhere by the indigenous people, the I-Kiribati, day and night, driving Troost to distraction. The I-Kiribati’s keenness on the song belies the richness and beauty of their own music; Troost enjoys hearing them sing their traditional songs when power failures prevent them from playing “La Macarena.” Troost finds himself at breaking point when his neighbours acquire a boom box, from which they blast the song at all hours. Unable to ask his neighbours to turn it down (Troost’s maid, Taibo, tells him that this is not done in Tarawa), Troost attempts to find and repeatedly play music that the I-Kiribati hate, but they seem to appreciate his first two choices: the Beastie Boys’s “Gratitude” and Nirvana’s “Lithium.” However, they dislike Rachmaninoff, Puccini’s La Bohème, and Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. Troost plays the jazz album at high volume for ten minutes, silencing “La Macarena.”



The I-Kiribati’s behaviour might be considered rude or even outrageous in the US and similar countries, but that behaviour is often in response to a difficulty that not many people in the US face, Troost explains. For example, Troost frequently returns home to discover couples having sex in his backyard. Rather than demonstrating a disregard for privacy, these couples have in fact seized a rare opportunity for intimacy away from the prying eyes of their families and neighbours. Another initially perplexing aspect of I-Kiribati culture is the bubuti system, which allows individuals to take any item they wish from another individual. This has a positive effect, Troost remarks, in that it gives rise to a society that is “profoundly egalitarian.” However, the system has the downside of discouraging the I-Kiribati from seeking advancement, with I-Kiribati in positions of power besieged with requests for money and jobs – requests that they are bound to grant.

Some aspects of the I-Kiribati culture can be detrimental to the environment and the health of the people on Tarawa, Troost observes. There is rubbish everywhere in Tarawa, but when Troost tries to gather up and burn the piles of nappies clogging a reef, Taibo stops him. The I-Kiribati believe that burning excrement will hurt the person who produced it, she tells him. Then again, the introduction of non-biodegradable products to a market without an effective waste-management system is not the I-Kiribati’s fault. Meanwhile, the government allows international industrial fishing trawlers to plunder the seas around Kiribati. Troost notes that under a defunct recycling scheme, children were paid to collect littered cans, which were then sent to Australia. In order to claw back profits, the government instituted an export tax, running the scheme out of business. Troost describes speaking to a government minister about the debacle; the minister is adamant that the government “deserved its cut.”

The various churches shake the I-Kiribati down for tithes, which are usually around thirty percent of a family’s income. Those who cannot pay are shamed in front of the congregation. Christianity is a remnant of British rule, which ended in Kiribati in 1979. Although the religion still thrives in Tarawa, the I-Kiribati retain many of their ancient animist beliefs. Troost touches on Kiribati’s colonial past, noting that the I-Kiribati appear to regard it in a positive light. He also mentions the Battle of Tarawa, “an inescapable part of daily life on the island,” with the debris of the devastating World War II fight between the Japanese and the US still littering its shores.



“To live on Tarawa,” Troost realises, “is to experience a visceral form of bipolar disorder”; one moment he is elated by the indigenous people’s demonstration of their culture in dance and song; another, he is assailed by heat, illness, isolation, lack of food, and “the realization that [Tarawa’s] overpopulation and all its attendant health and social problems, need not be as bad as it is.” When the time comes for him and his girlfriend to depart, he has become almost comfortable on Tarawa, and finds himself to some extent enjoying the challenges that its privations present. He is looking forward to returning to the US, but ends up accompanying his girlfriend to her new posting in Fiji.