Rhiann Marie - Round the World

Crusty or soggy?

Stewart Graham

Fri 29 Apr 2011 15:44

Friday 29 April 1916 Local 1416 UTC

03:55.285N 073:27.55E

We have found the people of the Maldives (Mawl- deeves) so far to be very friendly and very helpful. Our agent Abdullah of Alliance Management Services Company (AMSCO) has been exceptional and a very good man too. Male town and the southern part of the north Male Atoll where the airport is and where we have to anchor when completing formalities is not at all attractive. The anchorage itself, now that we have the westerlies prevailing is one of the worst anchorages we have been in since starting our circumnaivigation. I have not had a decent sleep for nights now. However you have to be there to get access to Male.

The airport is located in Hulemale which is in large part reclaimed ground. There is a constant stream of ferries from Hulemale to Male and at the princely price of 25 pence it is an excellent service. The ferries take up to two hundred people each and about twenty motorbikes too. They berth bow to and are not even tied up before the passengers start piling off the boat followed by the motorbikes driving over the bow onto the quay. We regularly get talking to people on the ferry and often they will offer to help us in any way and keep in touch by text!

We are very trusting people and this has been rewarded regularly. Here are a few examples of the experiences we have had. Having befriended a couple of young guys working on a charter boat next to us we had them over to the yacht for cold drinks and they regularly gave us dingy rides to the ferry terminal. One night Trish and I were in bed in the steaming heat watching Schindlers List actually, all of a sudden we heard a voice coming from the saloon. The lights were out and in my semi dress (naked actually) state I grabbed a pair of shorts and worked my way along the aft passageway to be met with a smiling shadow. This was Sumit from the next boat who said he had knocked but not been heard, with two fresh fish he had just caught and cooked for us. Had I been defensive or upset at him coming aboard I would certainly have caused ill feeling. On another occasion a guy we met at the airport and was very helpful to us calling a taxi and what not, having taken my number, called me one night asking if he could buy $1,000 dollars off me for thirteen Ruffiah each. I explained I did not have dollars and was not American and apologised i could not help. He asked me to keep this a secret. I could have suspected he was checking if there was cash aboard and possibly lining up a theft; possibly when we were absent from the boat in town. I decided he was straight and honest and after a couple of questions realised he just wanted hard to come by dollars for importing goods by internet, or for travelling or for the Hajj for example and should not worry. There were no issues. Another time three musketeers turned up with a fuel boat to refuel us and they really wanted to see inside Rhiann Marie never having seen anything like her. When refuelling finished we asked them to drop us with our tender on the jetty and then return and tie off our dingy to Rhiann Marie before casting off the fuel boat which was tied along side us at anchor. I trusted them despite appearances and left them to it in good faith and when we returned they had been as good as their word. No problems! I will get turned over at some point, but that will happen anyway and I would rather go on through life trusting people and only getting done occasionally than not trusting anyone and still getting done occasionally.

Now the Maldives. I already told you there are almost 1,200 islands however I have read recently there are actually 285,000 people here spread across 200 islands within the 26 Atolls that make up the country. The islands converted to Islam from Buddhism in 1153 AD and they are Sunni Muslim. They also appear to be of a sunny disposition. The language is called Dhivehi and is Sanskrit derived in common with the Singalhese language of Sri Lanka. It reads from top right to left and down the page. The Portuguese occupied the islands for a time and also the islands became a British Protectorate in 1887. Since 11 November 1968 the Maldives has been a republic. Transport around the islands is primarily by boat though sea planes run to most islands from Male.

Male is the commercial centre and capital of the islands and the buzz from the coming and going of all the trading and fishing boats arriving and departing daily from the market area of the town is intoxicating. Tuna being landed, fresh mangoes from the atolls, building materials being loaded on and off fishing boats all just a couple of hundred metres from a Presidential Office that would do a country one hundred times the size of the Maldives. Streets are narrow and buildings are generally four or more stories high giving the inner part of the town something of the flavour of the Souk. Women are almost all wearing the headscarf with an occasional one wearing a complete burka with nothing more than eyelashes protruding through the narrow slit created in the veil for vision. Male reflects the cultural and historic mix that has formed it which has also been influenced with the georaphic, religious and political crossroads in which it sits.

Something else which I have noticed on my travels that separates one part of the world from the other. Yesterday I was in a cafe and went to the loo to discharge my blackwater tanks. In common with almost everywhere since we left Australia there was a hose on the toilet wall with a trigger to control the water jet. Now sometimes where there are westerners around there is also loo roll. When there is only the prospect of cleaning my through hull fitting with nothing more than a blast of water, this has so far prevented me using the full functionality of the available water jet method. However yesterday the discharge had already been completed before the lack of dry loo roll with which to .... well you know........ was noticed. So ever the adventurous one I thought, I'll give it a go. So how do you do it? Down between the legs and aim back blasting up the back of your shirt, possibly now with water bourne residue? Risky I thought. From behind blasting forward with only your man tackle (if you are a man that is) preventing the water jet roughcasting the door of the loo? Standing up? No way! What a bloody pallaver. So now there I was drenched from the back of my knees to the back of my shirt thinking if only there was toilet roll I could dry myself. But there wasn't. So hovering my backside above the loo I gave my best impression of a dog when he comes out of the water trying to shake himself dry. However it failed miserably and resembled more of a bad effort at the "Twist". What ever it was it was ineffective and I had to endure the humiliation of hoiking my shorts up over my clean but soaking backside. Walking out of the loo like John Wayne I was sure everyone in the place was having a good lagh at my expense.

Now this may seem weird to you but I recently read that people in the east are horrified that we in the west should attempt to clean our through hull firttings with dry paper. One story I read was of an acclaimed Indian opera singer who came to perform in London and flunked the performance. Afterwards she claimed she could not concentrate for looking at all these dirty people in the audience who inevitably in her view must have had crusty bums. You know she has a point......