Mastering life in the Maldives

I’ve just had another attempt at making curry but haven’t quite got to grips with the amount of tamarind you put in. Tamarind is a souring agent and the first tentative mouthful sent me spluttering to the fridge in search of water. It’s just one aspect of Maldivian life I haven’t mastered yet. In fact, cooking and cleaning that are the sources of most of my woes.

Our kitchen/eating area is housed in its own building, a short stagger for the main part of the house – convenient for maintaining cleanliness and keeping the house free from the pungent aroma of curry; highly inconvenient if, like me, you frequently leave your bedroom without your phone, keys, glasses, sun glasses or any other accessories essential to negotiate life in a tropical climate.

Once in the kitchen you’re faced with a two-ring camping gas stove and a very small sink. Having only two rings on which to cook, and a distinct lack of kitchen work-surface, presents something of a challenge when attempting more complicated meals. When asked the other day, by a friend why I always seemed so ready to leave school at lunchtime I pointed out that, unlike him, I didn’t have a mother waiting at home, lovingly preparing lunch for me. Thankfully we’ve also been furnished with a fridge and a rice cooker, otherwise life really would be agonising.

Another perpetual problem is food. Twenty first century western logic tells us that food comes from shops. The same is not true of Maldivian logic. We’ve already established that fish arrives directly from the sea but as fair maidens we must wait for it to be brought to us. The principal appeared at the door just yesterday waving a bag of six rainbow runners at me. When I asked if he wanted any money for them he simply laughed. His uncle had just returned from a fishing trip with a catch of ten thousand fish.

The rest of our food mainly depends on what we can find in the shops and this, in turn, depends on what has arrived on the boat from Male. Virtually everything is imported and some of the packets and cans have travelled extraordinary distances. The cereal is made in Singapore, the Coke Zero hails from Saudi, while the chicken has flown all the way from Brazil – and I didn’t think chickens could fly. Our kitchen cupboards are therefore stocked with an eclectic combination of items, calling for an unceasing amount of creativity. You’d be amazed at what we can rustle up with an onion, a pumpkin and a packet of noodles. Mercifully, Mama Chief, our esteemed landlady, frequently takes pity on us, either appearing laden with her finest home-cooked snacks or gathering us up and carting us off to her kitchen to feed us properly.

Incidentally, at this very moment, Mama Chief is engaged in wrestling a fallen palm frond from where it is still attached to the base of a palm tree, thereby confirming my suspicions that maintaining a Maldivian household is more than a full-time job.

Our daily attempts to negotiate Maldivian life result in an astonishing amount of dirt. Bella’s feet are always spectacularly dirty! For a neat freak such as me it has been hard to come to terms with the idea that, no matter how hard I try, I am always going to be a little bit grubby round the edges and the almost a complete absence of dish cloths, tea towels, kitchen roll and loo roll frustrates me. Bella is always incredulous at the amount of time I can devote to cleaning things. It turns out that really we’re the perfect partnership. She likes to try things out, chop things up and generally make a mess, while I trot round after her tiding up.

One aspect of Maldivian life that has become habitual to me is the custom of taking your flip flops off when you enter the house, leaving them on the porch outside. The problem with this is that you’re not expected to do the same when you go into school. Embarrassingly, I often forget myself when going to pick up photocopies from the office and enter barefoot, generating helpless giggles from the office staff who can’t quite believe that the English girl can be so inept.

If nothing else, the last six weeks have proved to me that I am very much my father’s daughter. I delight in a tidy bedroom, I find ironing therapeutic and I only really feel at home once I’ve located the nearest shop and stocked up on water. Sorry Daddy, but I fear that you and I will never be life’s greatest travellers.

TTFN, Ta-ta for now xx