Navigation on Fuvammulah

One island, one atoll.

That’s the motto for Fuvammulah – floating just below the equator in the southern reaches of Maldives. One of the oldest atolls in Maldives, Fuvammulah was once comprised of several islands. Over thousands of years, however, the shallow lagoon filled in with debris, and many islands became one. Now, two fresh water lakes and regional differences in water and soil tables are physical proof of the local stories and songs that describe the landscape and history.

Named after the towering Areca nut trees that grow in abundance on the island, the “summer isle of Eden, lying on the dark purple sphere of sea” (explorer H.C.P. Bell), is unique in many ways. On the eastern shore, a large mound rises among the palm trees. I climbed in one day with my friend Mashidha, and realized it was the highest natural elevation I’d experienced in 3 months. The Havitta, as it is called, was once a Buddhist temple. After a series of foreign excavations, the mound has decreased in elevation. Islam arrived in Fuvammulah before the rest of Maldives, and historically there were many edhurudhaitha on the island - the Dhivehi distinction given to those who have memorized Qur’an.

From time immemorial, Fuvammulah has been incredibly sustainable.

The famous Muslim traveler, Ibn Battuta, wrote of Fuvammulah, “It is the fairest of islands, verdant and fruitful. Among it’s marvels, I observed that a branch cut from one of its trees, and planted in the ground, or on a wall, will cover itself with leaves and become itself a tree.” Indeed, the land remains extremely fertile. Unlike most other islands, the shore is still thick with palm trees, and breadfruit and mango trees are plentiful. Fields of bananas line the roadways, and the marshy bogs formed over time are green with yams, locally called ala. While most Maldivians remember the World War II era as one of starvation – without rice and flour from abroad – in Fuvammulah the islanders survived on local produce.

Unlike other islands in the Maldives, where the reefs fall away gradually from the shore and the deep sea, or maakandu, can lie hundreds of meters away, Fuvammulah has steep shingly beaches which plunge into depth almost immediately. Huge, rolling waves pound the beaches, which are all unique. If you present an elder with a handful of pebbles, it’s likely that he/she can tell you which shore each stone hails from. Due to its geological formation, before the harbor came a decade ago, many people perished trying to reach the shore through the heavy surf.

Due to its geographical isolation, Fuvammulah has a culture unto itself. Locals speak a different dialect, and, while many of they share many traditions with other Maldivian islands, they have slightly different cuisine. And while geographical isolation as allowed a distinct culture to develop, Fuvammulah’s connection with the outside world is longstanding. In fact, I was particularly interested to visit given its history as an island of navigators. My father still swears by celestial navigation on our sailboat, and, as one friend pointed out, if he were to be born a Maldivian, it would likely be in Fuvammulah.

Ishag Shafeeg organized for me to stay with Mr. Ahmed Shareef, whose children once stayed in his father’s home in Male’ while pursuing secondary education. When I arrived, Sobah and his wife Jeny had just returned with their baby son, Umar, from several years away from Maldives. Sobah hadn’t been back living on the island since he was 9, but was surprised by how little had changed.

A glance at the house names in Fuvammulah harkens a history of navigation. Mr. Shareef’s home, Maanel, is named for the national flower of Ceylon, or Sri Lanka, an important port of trade. Next door is New Delhi Ge. In a few days, I learned from Sobah’s uncle that it’s actually Sobah’s grandfather’s boat, called Moonlight, that appears on the Maldivian rufiyya.

Back in Male’ a few weeks before, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jenny Latheef, a good friend of my housemates Thanzy and Suntha, a champion of human rights, and one of the female leaders in the independence movement. Her husband, Abo, is from Fuvammulah. Early Thursday morning I went with Thaazyn to the home of Abo’s father, Thaufeeg, just down the street from the house where I’ve been staying. The street was quiet, tall trees cast shadows in the cloudy puddles that speckled the roadside, and we tiptoed round the edges carefully.

Thaazyn, Sobah’s cousin, has just finished his A-level and is back from a short holiday in Lincoln, England, where he visited his eldest sister. It seems to be a trend here to go away, in Fuvammulah education is highly valued, but the sad reality is that most people go elsewhere to find it – Sobah’s family case in point.

When we entered Thaufeeg’s home he was sitting bent over a sewing machine, light from the compound behind rushing in over his work. Behind him the undholi, or traditional swing, shivered in the breeze. Thaufeeg wore a simple brown collared shirt, and a traditional mundhu, checked blue tied around his thin waist. He has a wide smile, and nods as he speaks. His daughter Aishath lingered in the doorway, long curly hair passed over one shoulder.

Taufeeg was eager to chat with me.

In his lifetime, he journeyed to Male’ over 400 times, beginning at the age of 13. When he was 13 he remembers a famous navigator, Ibrahim Didi visiting the island and teaching the young boys how to use a sextant to navigate. The primary difference between education then and now, he explained, is that one had to pursue it for himself, there were no institutions.

Aishath brought watermelon juice, and the three of us settled into chairs, but only for a brief while. Within 10 minutes he was up and gesturing to the calendar on the wall, explaining which nakaiy, or season, was favorable for leaving Fuvammulah to travel.

Before when there was no compass, they would cast a weighted line into the water at due north, and watching which way the current carried it, correct the steering. If the line tended west, they corrected back to east, and vice versa.

I asked how they measured distance traveled before sextant and GPS, and Taufeeg disappeared into a back room, returning with a large sheet of paper, a pencil, and a length of string. Moving to the floor, Thaazyn and I watching as he drew a fan at the corner of the paper, cut it out, and punched a hole in each corner. Then he tied a piece of string to the two upper most corners, and at the base of the fan, inserted a pencil, which he explained would serve in place of a wooden peg – whose tail of string would meet the other two pieces at a common point.

From the central knot, a long piece of rope would trail out behind, peppered with a series of large and small knots. Between the large knots, called gosho, was a distance of 24 feet and equal to one nautical mile. Between two large knots were three small ones, called kali, dividing the section into four equal lengths, each equal to a quarter of a nautical mile. With an hourglass, called a tough, on board, the sailors would throw out a length of line and see how much passed over the side in 14 seconds, the time it took the hourglass to expire. Especially during the night hours, sailors would calculate the speed every hour, taking the average over 3 or 4 hours to calculate the distance traveled.

I went back to visit Thaufeeg several times, and on each occasion he wowed us with his incredible wealth of knowledge. He presented us with old maps which he sprawled on the floor, the sextant, a photo of his father - an expert in navigation by the stars (a skill Thaufeeg never learned because he is short sighted).

Fuvammulah was a whirlwind of interviews. I heard about traditional toddy-tapping – or the extraction of coconut sap from Hussein Didi, 80 years old and still springing up palm trees. I heard about the Suvadive government, a separatist movement from 1959-1963. I also befriended Jeff Hardy and Punk (Anshaan and Midhu), two 13-year-old gang members, only peaceful, they assured me. Once again I experienced incredible hospitality while staying in Fuvammulah – the Shareef family were extremely generous, I immediately felt like one of the family.