Maldives Day 3

This is going to be a short entry but I thought I’d just talk a little about the local island we visited on Day 3 of our trip. As usual we woke up to a beautiful dawn.

This was a day we wanted to spend leisurely – as if the fishing days weren’t leisurely enough but I mean, we could choose to either fill the day with strenous water sports like wind surfing or something, or just have a laid back day and lounge at the beach. We thought we would be going to the Local Island in the morning and have the Dolphin Safari in the evening. In the end, I decided we didn’t have to go for Dolphin Safari. After all, we saw the dolphins the day before and it was a beautiful sight. Moreover we didn’t have to crowd around the boat and take pictures no one can see. The memory of the dolphins was wonderful and was good enough for me.

The Maldivians are Sunni Muslims. So in order to respect their culture, we had to dress appropriately when visiting the local islands or the City of Male. We took a boat ride for about 30 minutes and arrived at this very desolated island. I couldn’t remember the name of the island now, but this was what greeted us when we arrived.

There are signs of a community no doubt. But it was really very quiet. You can see the white banners in the photo above. They seem to be some political outbursts of sorts, depicting in both Maldivian and English that ‘there is a need for change’.

Many parts of the island were under construction and they seem to be building a lot of residential homes. Most of where we went to looked like this.

Since it was the month of Ramadan, most of the people were indoors resting, or they were out lounging of makeshift ‘chairs’ like these.

We walked around a lot and there were only a handful of people. Here we are at the mosque, which was also empty.

We didn’t see much while walking around but we heard the primary school kids singing the school song during assembly. We also saw a couple of carpenters who were quite amused by tourists and one of them used his hp to take a photo of us! All around we saw signs of a community like a soccer field with fresh scores from the weekend before, political banners, schools, shops, a mosque and all that. But we hardly saw anyone. After more walking around, we saw this little kid playing with cards on his own. He wasn’t shy and didn’t run away. But he didn’t want to look up either.

Here’s AS with our guide

He’s the same guide who took us night fishing. After the visit to the local island, we realized that not everyone was as fortunate as our guide or his other colleagues in the resort to have a good job. This guide had a ’surfer dude’ friend (named by yours truly so because he really looked like one!) on the local island who has a gift shop. The whole island was so quiet and had only a handful of shops operating. These are the shops that catered for the locals and occasionally the tourists who needed a drink or something. The shelves are almost bare and have only ten or less of each product. Most of the other shops which were open were the tourist gift shops, one of which owned by the friend of our guide. Looking at how little visitors there are, we wondered how they actually make a living.

AS took a picture of this on one part of the island.

It was really different from the resort islands of Maldives. I didn’t go to Male and don’t know what the city is like but from what I hear, it seems much more different what what we’ve seen in the local islands. The heartening thing I guess is that schools are provided for even in these quiet little islands. So young children still get basic education even though they may not live in the city center. Looking at the seas near our resort and looking at the ‘beaches’ of the local island, I can’t help but feel very fortunate.

On another note, to remember our trip and our swim with the Manta, AS and I bought ourselves these Manta Ray pendants from the friend of our guide.

~ by alt.ayu on October 7, 2008.