Every Day Is Special: March 11 - Commonwealth Day in Tuvalu

March 11 - Commonwealth Day in Tuvalu

(Second Monday in March)

Posted on March 11, 2019

The flag of the Commonwealth
of Nations

The Commonwealth is a grouping of 53 nations. Almost all of these member nations were former territories (aka colonies) of the British Empire. The British Empire held onto its territories and colonies, basically, with political and military power, but the Commonwealth is completely voluntary. According to a 1949 declaration, all the member countries are considered "free and equal" - and that includes Britain (the United Kingdom) itself.

What's the Commonwealth for? Well, the nations have no legal obligations to one another - they don't HAVE to defend one another, for example - but are united by the English language and some aspects of culture, ties from history, and shared values of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Some people say that it's a friendly way for nations to stay in touch without having any formal obligations to one another.

If you want to know more about what the Commonwealth is actually for, check out this link. Note: not everyone agrees about what it's for and whether it should even exist!

The Commonwealth nations include large nations such as Canada, Australia, and India; medium-size nations such as Zambia, New Zealand, and Malaysia, as well as teeny nations such as Antigua and Barbuda, Seychelles, and Nauru. They include nations from all six inhabited continents, which means that the Commonwealth is spread widely across the world.

One of the teeny nations is Tuvalu. Unlike most Commonwealth nations, Commonwealth Day is actually an official public holiday, with events for kids, games, and other special celebrations in Funafuti, which is the capital city.

Check out some info about this island nation:

Located in the South Pacific, about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, Tuvalu is an island nation made up of three reef islands and six atolls. The reef islands are platform reefs, which can develop when the seabed is close enough to the surface of the ocean for coral reefs to flourish. The atolls, on the other hand, form when a volcanic island develops a fringing reef (a coral reef that stretches around or most of the way around the island) - and then the volcanic island itself erodes away or sinks below the surface of the water in some sort of tectonic action. Atolls look like a ring of "land" or reef surrounding a central lagoon.

Tuvalu is very low-lying and has poor soil. The economy includes coconut trees, pulaka (a starchy food that is a bit like taro and that can be grown in pits of composted soil below the water table, fishing, and sailors who work on the ships of other nations.

Steamed pulaka

The people of Tuvalu are mostly Polynesian.

Tuvalu is too remote to get many tourists. But it's lovely, isn't it?

Tuvalu is so low-lying that global warming might cause enough sea-level rise to completely eliminate it. Ecotourism might be a growing thing for Tuvalu - many people in the world DO value protecting the environment and keeping climate relatively stable!