From above the speck of sand that is the sovereign country of Nauru looks derelict, desolate, and abandoned. Although not abandoned, the third smallest independent nation in the world is certainly derelict and desolate. The island has one paved road that encircles the tiny atoll like a racetrack. Its people are the worlds most obese and some of the sickest. At one point, desperate to raise revenue, it tried to become a tax haven. It became a tax haven alright---for terrorists, money launderers, and other unsavory characters. Discarding this idea, they offered to become a detention center for would be immigrants to Australia. The irony and tragedy of all of this is that the people of Nauru were once the richest in the world. Well sort of, per capital income was such that, on paper anyway, every Nauruan was well off. Throughout the 1980s, the government spend lavishly. People who had never left the island started chartering flights to Australia, Japan, Hawaii, and various European capitals. Housing was free. You want to study something we cannot offer in Nauru? No problem. Hundreds (the country today only has 10,400 people) of young people were sent to the best schools in Australia...free of charge. Luxury cars were imported to drive around that one road. Where did all this wealth come from? It came from, no joke, bird poop. Partly anyway. Thousands of years worth of bird droppings mixed with the soil in such a way it created one of the richest phosphate deposits anywhere in the world. What is phosphate used for? Fertilizer. No matter how you look at it, Nauru was rich because of poop. The island was literally stripped of the resource first by Germans, then by Australians, then by the Japanese, then by the Australians again, and finally Nauruans themselves. Because it was evident the resource would one day be depleted, the government set up a trust to ensure financial stability in the future. It didn't. Successive governments allowed themselves to be duped into dubious ventures. One of the most talked about was the millions of dollars put into a musical about Leonardo Da Vinci. The musical flopped. When the phosphates did run out, the trust was not as large as it had been and was in fact losing money. Now the island is bankrupt and, as mentioned before, has become Australia's detention camp for refugees...and now you know the gist.
