Exciting Conversation

Once again, my week has been colored by a number of fortuitous encounters.

Tuesday I interviewed Mohammed, my new friend the taxi driver. Parking on the perimeter of Male with a view of the Tsunami monument and bobbing cargo ships, we settled in for an interview in his taxi. We commenced without air-conditioning, but within minutes we relented – the result, imperfect sound, interspersed with passing traffic, but a marvelous conversation.

Mohammed’s father was a ferry captain in one of the northern atolls back when dhoanis still operated under sail, and he used to make deliveries to Male that would sometimes last for weeks at a stretch. I asked him about the first day he arrived in Male, and he remembered seeing the president’s car and leaping to the other side of the street in fear. Over the independence his father had visited, and he had laughed to see his son driving the contraption he had once fled from.

At 19, Mohammed boarded a Greek vessel as a deckhand and became a seaman. He only recently retired after 25 years in the industry, taking up a job as a taxi driver in Male. The seaman’s life is a difficult one – long stretches away from home, at times grueling hard work. Largely self-educated, Mohammed is a real philosopher. He possesses an intense dedication to his family and is always looking out for others. “I’ve seen the whole world,” he told me. “Hottest hot, the coldest cold -- all for my children. I do not want to suffer my blood. I do not want to see them on the street.”


On Wednesday I shared a kurunbaa, or young coconut, with Hassan Hussein of Capital FM. Reclining in chairs in the shade of a roadside stand, we talked about his family, his travels, and journalism in the Maldives. He has offered to let me use an extra studio as a recording space for interviews – a godsend in this maze of frenetic honking and whirring that is Male. He mentioned a community radio program in the works through UNICEF.

Two days later, I found myself braving the sweltering midday heat to meet Humay Abdulghafoor of UNICEF in Fizzes, a small café just a block or two from the Faculty of Arts. Inspired by a youth-led radio program, “Chatting with my best friend,” in Nepal, UNICEF Maldives is in the initial stages of releasing a radio program aimed at tackling the drug issue here in Maldives. Studies conducted by the HRC and local NGOs reveal that each family in Maldives is somehow connected to the drug issue – if not through an immediate family member, at least a cousin. The community radio project comes on the heels of an extensive UNICEF led campaign, WAKE UP, designed to create awareness of the drug problem in Maldives. I’m going to give a presentation to a team next week on my experience in community radio and collaborate with them during the month of August as they commence a baseline survey of local youth and potential partnerships.


Attending a discussion for Women in Politics at the National Library led by Susan Shakow of Running Start in the U.S., I met Aniya. While she stands at 4’10, one might never guess it. Aniya is an intensely passionate woman, brimming with concern and a drive for change. She invited me to her home on Friday for an interview. I arrived at 11:00 a.m., glistening with sweat. Aniya poured me a glass of grape juice, and I didn’t leave until nearly 4 pm!

Aniya is perhaps best known for an article she wrote in early 2007 questioning the wearing of the veil in a local newspaper -- an article which caused a great deal of controversy among religious factions and for which she received violent threats likening her to author Salman Rushdie. Aniya was eventually arrested and transferred to the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs for questioning. In light of the events, she stepped down from her post of Deputy Secretary General of the Maldivian Democratic Party. She continued to work as a journalist for the Minivan Daily to expose corruption and human rights abuses in the Gayoom government.

Aniya remains an important member of the MDP and has participated in numerous historical rallies. She threw herself into the drive for change in 2008, and is one of a small, yet growing number of women active within the political arena. Even in the face of police brutality and a 9-day prison sentence, she balks at any notion of fear. Sitting across from Aniya in her apartment, five hours passed by without my noticing, so in awe I was of this incredible mother, activist, woman. Finally bidding me farewell at the gate of her apartment at 4 p.m., she folded several jasmine blossoms into my palm, waving as I slowly wended my way to the main street.

Her boyfriend Ahmed, the new head of the National Center for Linguistics and Historical Research, was also there. He is also a journalist by trade, one of the founding members of Sangu as well as Minivan Radio an opposition broadcast established while Ahmed and several others, including the current president, were in exile in the UK in 2003. Along with the Dhivehi Observer, founded by a friend, Sappe, it pioneered independent broadcasting in the Maldives, providing an alternative to government controlled media. Ahmed is an abstract artist, and his paintings lined the wall behind where Aniya was seated. Bright, swirling works, they captured the shifting light of an afternoon in Maldives, and seemed to echo Aniya’s animated gestures.

They invited me to attend an MDP meeting that night in Vilingili. Arriving late, I found myself stumbling into the Vili Ufaa café, its sandy floor lined with chairs arranged in haphazard rows towards a speaker, his face illuminated in the dim, yellow light. Afterwards some men passed around plastic trays of rice pudding – a traditional dish that's grown symbolic to MDP. Aniya ushered me over to a group of local women. They spoke only a little English, but they swapped large smiles and fawned over me as I ate my food, successfully inquiring through a woman named Nuzu as to my age, my marital status, and - of prime importance - my height. I met some wonderful people, it's great to have some familiar faces in Vilingili!


In search of traditional artisans, I entered a local arts shop, Heritage, on a whim (well, really the only local arts shop in Male – while they may bear a “Made in Maldives” stamp, most souvenirs here hail from Malaysia, Singapore or Sri Lanka), I came across the Creative Arts and Crafts Training Center, and after chatting with the kind man who runs the shop, was directed to Adam Manik. When I called him, he was away conducting research in the South, but arranged to meet me in Villingili for lunch on Saturday.

I’m quickly learning to treat my recorder as a third arm. “I’m an economist by trade,” Adam began, recalling his years of schooling in Paris, “but I don’t agree with Capitalism. I believe in spiritualism in the market system.” Where was my recorder!!

“Not a religious spiritualism,” he later countered, pausing. I took the opportunity to wring my right hand, which had nearly filled the remaining pages of my notebook. “I’m talking about the connection between the human and nature.” His father had been an atoll minister, he explained, and in his youth he had visited some of the more remote atolls and observed the traditional ways. He told me about an age in which Maldivians had lived by a calendar of 13 day cycles - when fishermen had been nomadic, moving with the tuna and the phases of the monsoons. He described the island as a living, evolving organism, one in delicate balance with the sea and its surroundings.

Tourism and economic development – offspring of Capitalism – have eroded the traditional technologies, the traditional knowledge, he stressed: so much so that young people are coming of age in a place they hardly know.

Adam is working to establish a transportation network in the Maldives, and is drawing on careful surveys and local opinion to guide his work - therefore engaging planning at the local level. He gave me a whole slew of contacts, and I'm excited for followup, this time with a recorder!


Outside of my life as a student of ethnography, journalism, history, and life – I’ve been trying to take in the full breadth of this wondrous place. Following the Independence, after sunset Male transforms into a parade of artificial flowers, skeins of cloth, gleaming electronics and DVDS, children’s dresses, mechanical birds. The annual Night Market runs for 10 days – and the entire household has been jettisoned into selling the Discount Book. The launch fell this past Friday evening, and Sarah and I helped create an audio – photo slideshow for the event. Friday night, I joined some friends for a barbeque on Villingili beach. As coconut shells burned red and curled in the dying fire, we sang to guitar and watched Male blink in the ebbing waves.

I’m still struggling to explain, and perhaps define my project, but the past few days I can see myself filling two roles here in Maldives. One – the media activist – collaborating with UNICEF and Blue Peace to explore media as a social and civic tool.

Second – the documentarian – gathering information and interviewing different members of Maldivian society with an eye to this larger issue of sustainability. What can islands and islanders teach us? How can this generation prepare for the next?