Kiribati is a country in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is made of 33 islands, spread over a huge piece of sea, so it looks tiny on land but very wide on a map. About a hundred thousand people live there. Britain once ruled it and called it the Gilbert Islands; it has been independent since 1979. The government sits at Bairiki, on Tarawa. Though actually, “Kiribati” is how the local language, Gilbertese, says “Gilberts”: in that language the letters ti sound like s, so people who know the place say something like “Kiribas”, not “Kiri-bah-tee”. The old native name for the main Gilbert chain is Tungaru. Leaders chose Kiribati when they became a republic because the country is more than those islands — it also takes in other atolls farther away.