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.

Would you believe it? The president slept in my bed!

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.  

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

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.

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....