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

The Wall (Street) Journal

Profuse apologies dear readers. The last two weeks have proved so diverting that I have found myself quite unable to sit down and write about it. The solution, I think, is to entertain you with two rather shorter posts over the course of the coming week. First however, further apologies for the ridiculous tone of this paragraph. We're watching Pride and Prej as I write.
I spent the best part of last week on the hunt for a curtain. Not any old curtain either. Specifically a curtain that, when drawn back by the principal, could play the best supporting role in the grand unveiling of the Wall Journal.
The Wall Journal is, in reality, a notice board soon to be filled with nice pieces of English work contributed by our pupils. But in the world of Ihavandhoo School it is an event. Events require planning and planning presents numerous opportunities for miscommunication and not a small amount of bureaucracy. Meetings must be held, tasks allocated (and promptly forgotten) and you must not forget to issue a circular. Everybody likes a good circular.
At times, our fantastically democratic school manages to make English local government look efficient, and that’s saying something. If you can successfully negotiate the red tape, and your event doesn’t fall victim to budget cuts, sickness or postponement, you’re doing pretty well.
Having duly secured an appropriate notice board, the hunt for the curtain commenced. The principal assured me that said curtain was in existence and a member of the support staff had been instructed to rig it up. So you will understand my dismay at finding my board still naked and without curtain upon my return several hours later. Fortunately, the principal reappeared at the crucial moment and a flurry of activity ensued: someone was dispatched to obtain cloth; a seamstress was prevailed upon to hem the cloth; and the maintenance man was there late into the night, hanging the curtain with fishing line.
Mercifully, the grand opening went down a storm. There was applause and even a short speech. The Wall Street Journal it ain’t but I think our little notice board has some life in it yet.

New-found friends

This blog post was supposed to be dedicated to the new people in our lives but Mama Chief, our esteemed landlady, has just appeared. Apparently two people from the Ministry of Education are on their way, as I write, to Ihavandhoo and will be staying overnight in our house! On the Maldivian ‘need to know’ scale this information obviously rates quite low because no one has told us about it. Anyhow, they’re coming and Mama Chief has arrived, complete with two chickens and some hired help, to prepare a feast for our visiting dignitaries. Oh good, more food.

While she whipped up a rainbow cake in a frying pan we decided to show her some of our newly-learnt Dhivehi. She was crippled with laughter as Bella proudly reeled off the Dhivehi words for pumpkin, curtain (not to be confused with certain), garlic and Friday. An eclectic choice of words I grant you, but as we only have the A to F section of our Dhivehi dictionary, our vocabulary is somewhat limited. Bella and I have now retired to our rooms, leaving Mama Chief free rein of the kitchen. She was last seen mixing ingredients in our washing up bowl...

Let us return to the intended topic of this post: our new-found friends and other assorted people in our life. Being the charming and friendly young ladies that we are, Bella and I have found it relatively easy to make friends. The Maldivians are a timid bunch so it’s the most out-going characters we have come to know first but their names have caused us a certain (not to be confused with curtain)amount of trouble.

Maldivian names are a social minefield. Every third man has the first name Mohammad (for obvious reasons) and if they’re not called Mohammad, then the chances are they’ll be Hussan or Ibrahim. So if you stand in the street and call Ibrahim, half the island comes running. To overcome this problem they can choose from a wider variety of second names, such as Mahir, Waheed or Asima, by which people tend to be known. But of course for every rule there is an exception. Mariyam Ibrahim and Fathima Moosa are both girls in my class. When the poor, unsuspecting Miss L tried referring to them as Ibrahim and Moosa she evoked peals of laughter and looks that could kill.

Ever resourceful, Bella and I have found a solution to our troubles. We have renamed our friends and acquaintances with nicknames that mean something to us. So, without further ado, allow me to introduce you. The Big Man was our very first friend. He is the deputy principal of the school and, in the principal’s initial absence, was in charge. Bella and I have something of the soft spot for the Big Man because he’s just so smiley and kind. Next up, Cafe Guy, so called because he accompanied us to a cafe on our second day here and sat with us while we had lunch. He has been so attentive that we were somewhat surprised to learn that he has a wife... Scout Guy has also become a good friend along with Right-hand Man, Beardy Short-Trousers, New Crush, Tubby, Lama Guy (don’t ask), and most recently the Very Big Man aka the principal. Sadly, some of our new found friends have recently left the island to go to Malé for higher studies. We’re working on replacements.

I have to go now. It’s time for the weekly war with the washing machine.