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Otherwise the adjustment is smooth. Kaara still hopes she’ll be promoted to flower arranger, Berini still wants to graduate from cleaning laundry to cleaning toilets.

And hotel management is already thinking about another Kiribati recruitment trip. Companies rely on institutional memory, so they need people who want to stay on — for money, for protection from climate change, whatever.

“Migration with dignity” may cost a lot; may underestimate the dignity of actual refugees; may take the best qualified people out of their country; may not allow everyone to find work abroad; may not give anyone legal protection from climate change; may not address the causes of climate change at all. But it’s a start for some and maybe for others.

While the people they serve complain about getting the Ocean View Room when they wanted a Premium Ocean View Room, the housekeepers return to their staff quarters at night. The quarters have twin-sized beds, not straw mats, and are built for two people, not a dozen. But the women just pull the mattresses off the frames, pile blankets around them, and cram as many friends in as they can, five or six chatting on the floor.

Kaara and Berini ask me to stay with them, but the resort won’t allow it. Alone in my cavernous room, when fumbling for a light switch I think of a sermon delivered in Kirbati the same morning I met Anote Tong’s old teacher. Father Keleto told his congregation that it doesn’t matter if they’re poor when they die. As long as they care for others during their life and others care for them, they’ll have, he called it, “dignity.”

Still, it’s nice to have work as well, especially more than a metre above water.