Other islands
The Maldives isn't all luxury resorts (5 minute preview, 10 minute read)
Writing about Gulnyjarubay/ Fitzroy Island last week reminded me how many fascinating islands I have visited. I don’t mean places where tourists go, but islands that I’ve had the privilege to visit through my work. Some have been inaccessible and obscure, such as Round Island, to the north of Mauritius, and Rasgetheemu in the Maldives. Some have been accessible to tourists, but I’ve seen a side that a tourist might not see, such as the invasive species infestations of Maui. Each island is a unique treasure.
I would like to share some of these islands with you. For the next few fortnightly Friday articles, I’ll be writing about one of the unusual islands I’ve visited. Please join me on this journey.
Twenty New Zealand dollars a night won’t buy you much in the Maldives. The island group, which lies south-west of India in the Indian Ocean, is famed for its luxurious and expensive resorts. These resorts are so far-removed from ordinary Maldivian life that the everyday laws and conventions of the country don’t apply. You can get a breakfast of bacon and eggs, drink beer, wine and spirits, and plunge into the azure water wearing nothing but a bikini – all banned for Maldivians. You can easily spend thousands of dollars a night on accommodation.
When I visited, though, I wasn’t a tourist and I didn’t get close to a resort. And I really did spend less than twenty dollars a night for part of the time I was there.
My opportunity to visit the Maldives came about through my work on invasive species. I was one of a number of New Zealanders asked to contribute to an international training workshop being held in New Zealand. Everyone else who presented at the workshop gave a lecture. I spoke for ten minutes, told everyone to get into small groups, and gave participants an exercise. The point was for them to use their local knowledge and expertise within the framework I gave them.
One of the course participants took note. A few months later, he sent me an email. Would I be interested in developing and teaching a course on invasive species management for people in Kerala (India) and the Maldives, as part of a United Nations programme? Was I ever.
As well as the teaching, I was invited to join a couple of field trips to two of the more remote Maldivian islands. The capital of the Maldives, Malé, is located on an atoll near the centre of the archipelago. The islands that I visited were Rasgetheemu, part of Raa Atoll, around 350 kilometres to the north of Malé, and Fuvahmulah, an island all on its own around 550 kilometres to the south of Malé. Today, I’m only going to tell you about Rasgetheemu, and I’ll write about Fuvahmulah in a couple of weeks.
The Maldives are made up of a number of large atolls, which are huge rings of coral reef. Each of the atolls in the Maldives is made up of low lying islands – a total of around 1200 – and areas where the reef doesn’t break the sea surface. To get to Rasgetheemu, first I had to fly from Male to one of the airports on another atoll, around an hour away. Then I had to take a small boat, which could hold four passengers, for a 1 ½ hour trip which passed a few resorts but mostly seemed to be crossing the open ocean. It wasn’t, but for most of the journey there was no land in sight.
It was also rough. Again and again, the boat would rise up then crash down with a jolt which shook my bones every time. At one point the sky darkened to an ominous grey and it began to rain heavily. The two Indian men who were leading the field trip watched me with concern – they’d been to the island before and knew what it was like, but they worried it would be too much for their exotic visitor. I kept a smile on my face to reassure them. The Maldivian team member who acted as our translator slept for the entire journey. I’ve never met anyone who seemed so relaxed.
According to the Maldivian Department of Statistics, Rasgetheemu had a population of just over 500 in 2006, and I don’t think it’s grown since then. The island covers around 40 hectares, which makes it not much larger than Matiu/ Somes Island in Wellington Harbour. It’s flat, of course, like all of the Maldivian Islands, and about half of the island is forested. The rest is made up of weedy fields and a village with coral sand lanes and houses with walls of coral rock and concrete. Coconut palms grow everywhere, but when I was there many were unhealthy as a result of the coconut leaf beetle, which arrived in the Maldives in 2002 and has since spread throughout the island group.
The village had limited amenities. I saw a single shop, a café where we ate a late lunch on arrival, and a restaurant where we ate the rest of our meals. For the four days we were there, we were the only customers.
The restaurant wasn’t like any other I’d experienced. At breakfast, we ordered our lunch, at lunch we ordered our dinner and at dinner we ordered our breakfast for the next day. There was no menu I could read, so I took what the others had as a guide. There was rice, there was roti bread, there was ‘fish fry’, which was some sort of small fish fried in oil, and there were curries. I loved the vegetable curry, because for most of my trip there weren’t a lot of vegetables. There was also chicken curry and tuna curry. I wasn’t too fussy – if it’s a proper local curry, I’m happy.