Belinda Jackson reports how the donation of buckets to villagers is helping lives in remote communities.

Tiana Reimann distributing buckets to Baia villagers in West New Britain Province. Credit: Tiana Reimann

On the remote isles of Rein Bay in West New Britain, a bucket is a lifeline.

With no easy access to fresh water, every drop of water used for drinking and washing is collected from the islands’ rivers, sometimes in cooking pots and drums.

It’s a sight that caught the attention of Tiana Reimann, a sport fishing and cultural guide for her family’s company, Baia Sportfishing PNG. Based in Kimbe, the capital of West New Britain, Reimann sails regularly between these islands.

“A single bucket can help up to 10 people with their daily livelihoods. I can never give enough.”

“I’d see people carrying water in saucepans and even old oil drums – who knows what chemicals are in those drums?” says the Kimbe local, who completed her high school and university education in Brisbane, Australia, before returning to help run the family’s business, an hour’s flight north-east of Port Moresby.

That first memory of villagers walking for kilometres to fetch water in small or unclean vessels would stay with her until a chance encounter in Brisbane. Out of the blue, in 2015, she received a message from a grammar school, offering her 100 empty chlorine buckets used from its pool.

“Seeing the buckets stacked together, I realised they were perfect for the remote villages in PNG,” says Reimann. “That moment sparked the idea for ‘Bucket of Love’.”

She got the buckets onto a shipment going from Brisbane to Kimbe and delivered them to the village of Baia two months later, along with school uniforms, sports equipment and clothing from other schools.

“Now, they can wash the buckets, close the lids tight and keep fresh water clean, or protect food from such animals as pigs and rats,” she says.

Over the past few years, Bucket of Love has sent more than 700 buckets out to the islands, thanks to the continued support of bucket donations from the Ballina Memorial Pool & Waterslide in northern NSW. It’s a drop in the ocean; Reimann estimates a need for up to 500 buckets on one island at any time, but helping one person is just as important as helping many.

“We were always taught by our parents that if you have the ability to help, you help. It’s as simple as that. And a single bucket can help up to 10 people with their daily livelihoods. I can never give enough. “There are a lot of people who want to help, but don’t know how to do it,” she adds.

Shipping is the biggest expense, but Reimann has been supported by Kimbe Bay Shipping Agencies and Malama Enterprises, which ship regularly to Kimbe and allow her to add her donations to their containers, at no cost.

“And if I didn’t have this job (with Baia Sportfishing), it would be very difficult to reach these communities – fuel is expensive, but I plan trips around the communities we anchor close to,” says Reimann, who is also a licensed boat captain. “We’ll visit the community to donate the items and discuss everyday challenges they face.”

Aside from buckets, she has sourced and donated wheelchairs, educational supplies, sports equipment and even solar lighting. Most recently, she delivered school uniforms donated by her old school in Brisbane, Somerville House, to the village of Gilinit, located in the Itni River in the far west of West New Britain.

And Bucket of Love is not Reimann’s only project – her website, Zambilla & Co, and several Australian stockists sell bright tasselled earrings hand made by local women, which provides an exercise book and writing utensils to a PNG student for every pair of earrings purchased. And at the end of the year any extra profits go into a project – anything from buying a photocopier for a school to a bush composting toilet.

“I design the colour combinations from my photography of the fauna and flora of PNG and send them to the local artisans to bring them to life,” says Reimann.

Her website also sells dresses, scarves, pillows and other textiles designed by her mother, the renowned artist Nathalie Le Riche, while her sister, based in Australia, is the founder of Remarkable Bags, which are made by local artisans in Bali. All profits are sent to a charity of choice.

Reimann and her family are again pooling their expertise to create PNG’s first glamping venture, in the forests of the Nakanai Mountains in New Britain.

The camp is accessible only by helicopter, flying over lava belts, volcanic mountains, pristine rivers and the 510-metre Minye Sinkhole – the deepest sinkhole in the southern hemisphere. “It’s going to be the most incredible destination and adventure PNG has to offer, a bucket-list item for sure,” she promises.

“Through our sport fishing ventures, we’ve been doing positive tourism for 23 years now,” she explains. “We do micro-tourism – small, low-impact tourism that brings in local income and benefits through donations from tourists.

“PNG is remote and therefore expensive to visit, but it’s one of the most diverse and untouched places in the world,” Reimann says. “Its raw authenticity has incredible potential to become one of PNG’s major exports.”

Never content to sit still, she’s already working on her next project, helping the amputee disability community in the Kove islands, supplying artificial limbs and crutches to those who have suffered amputation because of diabetes.

But Reimann retains a modesty about her actions. “When people ask me what I do, I say I collect buckets for remote villages,” she says.

“The humble bucket is an essential tool to these remote communities, and it positively impacts their lives in ways you can’t imagine.”

To find out more, see zambilla.com/bucketoflove

This is an edited version of an original article first published in the October-December 2024 issue of Paradise, the in-flight magazine of Air Niugini.