Things are sailing along smoothly here on the other side of the world. We've had some interesting weather the past few days. No MJO, the forecasters are a bit stuck on the issue of when it will return to the central Indian ocean, but lots of deep convection and other interesting clouds and such. But that's not what I'm here to talk about (for today at least). Now that I've been in the Maldives for a bit I thought I would jot down some of my first impressions about the local people, food, culture, and environment.
The number one thing that stands out to me about the Maldives, in comparison to my limited experiences in other parts of the world, is the idea of "island time". Island time is the concept that, on a small island in the middle of nowhere with no connection to the outside world, why would you have any reason to hurry to do anything? Today is just like yesterday, tomorrow will be like today. The sun comes up and goes down, sometimes it rains (ok, lots of times), and you can pretty much go at your own pace. This has been most evident in restaurants - where any group larger than 2-3 people can expect to take 2+ hours to eat. There are some stories from other folks about going to a restaurant, ordering, and then seeing the waiter leave on their scooter to go buy the ingredients for the food that you're about to eat. On island time it takes anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes to get a drink at the bar (at the resort only, there's no alcohol on the rest of the island). To set up the radar the technicians needed a crane to lift various parts, so they scheduled one for 9 am every morning. After a few days they started betting on when the crane operator would actually arrive. Sometimes it was 9 am, but sometimes it was 4 pm. By one account they offered the guy more money to actually show up on time, but he turned them down. It was basically whenever the guy felt like getting up and coming. Some days the stores are open when they say they will be, and some days they don't open at all. As a local this must be great. As a westerner used to a somewhat punctual functioning society, it's sometimes frustrating. But then I just have to stop, breathe, and live like I too am on island time.
My thoughts about the people here are somewhat complicated and very opinionated. Keep in mind while reading this that I'm not writing to be judgmental, but rather reflective of what I see and think. The Maldivian people, aside from being very slow, are very nice and happy to have us here. The thing I can't straighten out is my opinions about just how poor of a country this really is. Our waiters have a monthly income of about $150.00 US. In any given family typically only the males will work. Supporting a family on that little money may seem insane to us, but given the local economy they actually have one of the better jobs. There are no homeless and it doesn't seem like anyone is starving. Their buildings, mostly made out of concrete blocks with stucco and rusted tin roofs, are quite old and somewhat rundown. There is one paved road on all of the islands, the rest being dirt and mud (did I mention it rains a lot). There is a local house in town where we've been taking our laundry ($4 US for a whole wash compared to $40 US at the hotel). There are five families living in that house, with each family getting one room. Their currency, the rufiyaa, trades at about 15:1 with the US dollar (compared to an insane 2,000:1 when I was in Uganda). Despite all of these indicators I don't get the feeling that they are poor because they don't act like they are poor - at least in my projected opinion on what how this looks. I get the impression that it's not that they don't have a lot, it's that they don't need a lot. It's almost a purely sustenance culture - as long as they have food, clothes, family, and religion they seem very happy. Nobody has mp3 players, laptops, or cars. In America this would probably lead to some not so pleasant times living amongst everyone else who does have these things. Here I don't get the sense that they care. Maybe that's a good thing.
I know this post is getting long but I want to mention one more thing that's been on my somewhat environmentally conscious mind - their pollution of the water. Despite being a culture that's incredibly dependent on their environment for food and life as a whole, they really dump a shitload of stuff in the water. It's not uncommon to see housewives in the morning hauling boxes of garbage to the bridge to toss over. Based on what I've seen washed up on the beaches, anything from plastic bottles to flipflops and t-shirts, they throw everything in there. What they don't toss away they burn. To me this is just really odd. They eat fish they catch for almost every meal but they treat the ocean like a landfill. They must realize that this must not be good because even the locals don't drink the water here. On a side note, for all future travelers - if the locals don't drink the water then your pansy inexperienced American stomach will strongly rebel if you drink the water. Don't do this. Don't even brush your teeth with it. You'll thank me later. Here's a snap of the beach by the radar with all kinds of crap on it.
On that note I think I'll wrap it up for the day. This has been a bit of a long, heavy post so I'll leave you with some more pretty pictures to chew on. Enjoy!
All for now,
Casey
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