Right next to Tuvalu’s tiny airport is a small shop known as the Tuvalu Women’s Handicraft Centre. Lined with colorful handmade baskets, fans, necklaces, mats, fishhooks, and woodcarvings, the shop showcases the work of female artisans from the island nation. The shop is only open two days a week when flights land on the Funafuti Airport Airstrip. It is Tuvalu’s only souvenir shop. In Polynesia, it’s often the women who learn and pass down traditional techniques used to create such handicrafts. Polynesian woven goods populate almost every aspect of life…
