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