Anuta - An Island Governed By Love

The story of the unique South Pacific Island where life has remained unchanged for hundreds of years.

Anuta is home to 300 people, giving it a population density to rival Bangladesh. The nearest school is hundreds of miles away and there is no clinic. Few people earn money but they don’t need it. Everything they need they grow or harvest themselves, and have sustained their resources across the generations.

Huw Cordey visited Anuta to record part of a BBC TV series, South Pacific. He meets the islanders and their Chief, and hears about their lives. He fishes with them, catches birds with them, and lives with them, discovering along the way the guiding principle, unique to this place, that all Anutans live by the principle of ‘Arofa’, or love.

But modern life is catching up with the Anutans, and not everyone is happy with the island idyll where tradition is all, and individualism is nothing.

Producer: Lizz Pearson.

First broadcast on Radio 4 in May 2009.