It seems I have solved the mystery of the lone air conditioning unit. Mama Chief, our esteemed landlady, rocked up this afternoon to do the cleaning. When we first arrived, Chief, our greatly esteemed landlord, informed us that Mama Chief would come every day to clean. Well, she came every day for the first week and since then we’ve barely seen her.
Anyway, she came, she cleaned and then she gave us a lesson in how to make curry. At least, she gave Bella a lesson in how to make curry while I was dispatched to the shop to buy a pumpkin. Having returned with said pumpkin, I was banished from the kitchen once more on the grounds that it was too crowded.
Finding myself without occupation, I decided to take a turn around the garden with Chief as he surveyed his estate. He told me about the house and his plans for the garden – he’s designing a water feature don’t you know – and I asked how old the house was. It transpires that the house was build eighteen months ago just in time for a local fishing day celebration at which the Maldivian president was the honoured guest. As island chief, our esteemed landlord chose to accommodate the president in our house, more specifically in my bedroom! How exciting is that?! The president slept in my bed! I’m still getting over the excitement now.
As my tale demonstrates, there’s never a dull moment on Ihavandhoo. Quite the opposite in fact. At the weekend we received a last-minute invitation to an island wedding: round one, the ceremony on Thursday night; round two, the party on Friday. Never in all my life have I seen such a miserable couple - apparently Maldivians don't smile for photos - but it was a Maldivian wedding all the same and an informative experience. Friday also held a girls’ volleyball tournament. Volleyball is about the only activity capable of getting a Maldivian moving faster than a snail’s pace.
On Saturday afternoon the deputy principal called to inform me that I was going to deliver the assembly talk to the whole school at 6.50am the next morning. I was horrified. I’ve only been here a fortnight and every assembly so far has been conducted exclusively in Dhivehi, the local language. Bella on the other hand thought it was hilarious. Needless to say I survived and I thought I did rather well. Possibly as a result of my eloquence on the assembly ground, I’m now being pushed to become head of the English department. So, forget sipping cocktails and sunbathing on the beach, I’ve got work to do.
Toodle-oo xx
P.S. Thank you for all your comments. I'm gradually working out how the blog editor works, so hopefully you'll be able to see the comments soon, and some photos too.
Monday 25 January 2010
Thursday 21 January 2010
Paradise doesn’t come with air conditioning
Actually, that’s a lie. At this very moment I am sitting under virtually the only air conditioning unit on the island, which happens to be attached to my bedroom wall. The only other one I’m aware of is in the school principal’s office, leading me to the obvious conclusion that all the students’ trying behaviour is actually a covert attempt to get cool. I can only hope that word doesn’t get round about my air con unit or we’ll be in all sorts of trouble...
I digress... the air con is a god-send because it is hot, hot, hot and when I say hot, I don’t mean in the pleasant ‘oh isn’t it lovely to kick back and relax in the heat’ kind-of-a-way. It’s more of an ‘I think I’m about to expire’ kind-of-experience on a daily basis. But you know your beginning to acclimatise when you’re not soaked through at the end of a school day and the prospect of jeans in the evening doesn’t make you wilt any further. So I’m happy to report that we’re beginning to acclimatise.
When I say we, I’m referring to me and my partner in crime, Bella. Bella is blonde and the sight of us leaves old islanders rooted to the spot as we stroll down the street. They look at us as if to say, ‘What ARE they?’ Of course, things are different with Chief and Mama Chief, our esteemed landlords. Chief is cultured. He’s been to Sri Lanka, to learn English. So he’s not in the least bit phased by us and our immodest dress sense (by immodest I mean that we sometimes show some ankle and often an elbow). Mama Chief collapses into giggles at the mere sight of us. She finds it ludicrously funny that we don’t know how to make curry, that we can’t make the primitive washing machine work and that we didn’t know that all Maldivian snacks are made of fish.
That reminds me; I set you homework at the end of last session and you have all failed to complete it. Very disappointing, but then I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have even come close to telling me how many ways you can cook with canned tuna. Here are just a few ideas we’ve encountered so far: you can put it in fried rice, fried noodles, pasta (hot and cold), curry, samosas, crispy balls with potato (and lethally concealed chillies), and let’s not forget the good old tuna mayo sandwich. We are surrounded by vast seas of fresh fish and seafood. Fishermen spend hours at sea, boasting about the size of their last catch. Yet can you buy any of it in the shops? No. Just tinned tuna. And you’ve got to particularly watch out for the value packs. They make Tesco value tuna look like a luxury brand.
Anyway, enough grumbling from me, we’re about to go swimming and that really IS a perk of this job. If you stand on the main street by the school, you can look from one end of the island to the other and see sea on both sides. We’ve identified a good spot, where the water is clear of rocks and the beach is free of nappies (it’s properly gross), so all that remains is for me to don my burkini. I’m joking – just.
TTFN xxx
I digress... the air con is a god-send because it is hot, hot, hot and when I say hot, I don’t mean in the pleasant ‘oh isn’t it lovely to kick back and relax in the heat’ kind-of-a-way. It’s more of an ‘I think I’m about to expire’ kind-of-experience on a daily basis. But you know your beginning to acclimatise when you’re not soaked through at the end of a school day and the prospect of jeans in the evening doesn’t make you wilt any further. So I’m happy to report that we’re beginning to acclimatise.
When I say we, I’m referring to me and my partner in crime, Bella. Bella is blonde and the sight of us leaves old islanders rooted to the spot as we stroll down the street. They look at us as if to say, ‘What ARE they?’ Of course, things are different with Chief and Mama Chief, our esteemed landlords. Chief is cultured. He’s been to Sri Lanka, to learn English. So he’s not in the least bit phased by us and our immodest dress sense (by immodest I mean that we sometimes show some ankle and often an elbow). Mama Chief collapses into giggles at the mere sight of us. She finds it ludicrously funny that we don’t know how to make curry, that we can’t make the primitive washing machine work and that we didn’t know that all Maldivian snacks are made of fish.
That reminds me; I set you homework at the end of last session and you have all failed to complete it. Very disappointing, but then I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have even come close to telling me how many ways you can cook with canned tuna. Here are just a few ideas we’ve encountered so far: you can put it in fried rice, fried noodles, pasta (hot and cold), curry, samosas, crispy balls with potato (and lethally concealed chillies), and let’s not forget the good old tuna mayo sandwich. We are surrounded by vast seas of fresh fish and seafood. Fishermen spend hours at sea, boasting about the size of their last catch. Yet can you buy any of it in the shops? No. Just tinned tuna. And you’ve got to particularly watch out for the value packs. They make Tesco value tuna look like a luxury brand.
Anyway, enough grumbling from me, we’re about to go swimming and that really IS a perk of this job. If you stand on the main street by the school, you can look from one end of the island to the other and see sea on both sides. We’ve identified a good spot, where the water is clear of rocks and the beach is free of nappies (it’s properly gross), so all that remains is for me to don my burkini. I’m joking – just.
TTFN xxx
Sunday 17 January 2010
And so the adventure begins...
So here I am, 10 days into my intrepid explorations of the Maldivian islands and I have finally found time to sit down and draw breath.
The subsequent days have been spent waging war: against the heat and the excessive number of clothes we are expected to wear; against the kitchen and the washing machine, both of which can be described as primitive; with the insect population of this island, to which I take violent objection, against my immune system, notoriously bad at fighting off ear infections, which has failed me once more; and with my pupils, in a bid to get a word of English out of them edge-ways. There have been losses – my clothes are already twice as baggy as when I arrived – but there have also been victories, notably in my campaign against the cockroaches.
There is so much more to tell: of Chiefy and Mama Chief, our esteemed landlords; of the extraordinary facial hair sported by some Maldivian men (and a few unfortuate women), of the opportunities that arise when you’re role in a community is that of token white girl. But we will leave it there for now. Your homework for this session is to come up with as many different ways to cook with canned tuna as possible. We’ll be reviewing your efforts, and mine, next time.
TTFN, Ta-ta for now.
P.S. If there are any Blue Peter producers reading, in the absence storage items I have just been extremely resourceful. In the last hour I've made a pen tidy from a tissue box and two jewellery holders from plastic bottles. I shall be available for interviews and screen testing upon my return in December....
Malé was organised chaos, its citizens high on caffeine and somewhat incommunicative, but great fun. The other volunteers are lovely and we spent two happy days cruising round the capital in high holiday spirits, developing a taste for fried noodles and notching up introductions with government ministers.
From there we were dispatched to the far-flung corners of the country which, after two days’ gallivanting, came as a bit of a shock. It was even more of a shock to arrive on our island at 3am on Sunday morning to discover we were expected in school, ready to teach at 6am the same morning. 
The subsequent days have been spent waging war: against the heat and the excessive number of clothes we are expected to wear; against the kitchen and the washing machine, both of which can be described as primitive; with the insect population of this island, to which I take violent objection, against my immune system, notoriously bad at fighting off ear infections, which has failed me once more; and with my pupils, in a bid to get a word of English out of them edge-ways. There have been losses – my clothes are already twice as baggy as when I arrived – but there have also been victories, notably in my campaign against the cockroaches.
There is so much more to tell: of Chiefy and Mama Chief, our esteemed landlords; of the extraordinary facial hair sported by some Maldivian men (and a few unfortuate women), of the opportunities that arise when you’re role in a community is that of token white girl. But we will leave it there for now. Your homework for this session is to come up with as many different ways to cook with canned tuna as possible. We’ll be reviewing your efforts, and mine, next time.
TTFN, Ta-ta for now.
P.S. If there are any Blue Peter producers reading, in the absence storage items I have just been extremely resourceful. In the last hour I've made a pen tidy from a tissue box and two jewellery holders from plastic bottles. I shall be available for interviews and screen testing upon my return in December....
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