Air Maldives Calendar '94

Just written a piece for the first edition of Maldivian's new inflight Magazine. Here's a preview of the best bit. Six air hostesses sitting on the wings of an aeroplane.

Before Island Aviation Services was incorporated in 2000, the regional airports were serviced by Air Maldives. Gan on Addu Atoll was the only such airport until the late 1980's when Hanimaadhu on Haa Dhaalu and Kaddhu on Laamu were built. Finally Kaadedhdhoo on Gaaf Dhaalu was opened in 1993. To celebrate this and promote flights to the regional airports, it was decided to make a calendar for 1994 on each airport, incorporating what neighbouring islands had to offer.

As you can imagine, it was no great burden to fly around the country with a small team and six air hostesses, looking for iconic locations and indigenous crafts to photograph. On Kulhudufushi, the capital of Haa Dhaalu, for example, we photographed the still extant skill of making coir rope by hand. On Addu, we found a craftsman of fine model dhonis and also a delightful location along a curving lagoon where a lonely swing had been hung from a leaning palm.

An air hostess interacted with each scenario, though she didn't always look a natural fit in her floor-length bright blue uniform. The design was a dhigu hedhun, which is a national costume introduced in the fifties and now worn mostly for official or ceremonial occasions.

It all seems like another age now. A naive, carefree time before the airline and the tourism business grew up. The pictures here were taken two years before Gan on Addu had its first resort (Ocean Reef, now Equator Village) and fully 15 years before resorts were built around the other regional airports.

How Lucky Am I ?

How lucky am I, shall I count the ways? Five minutes after coming alongside Diva in the seaplane, Manfred, owner of the watersports centre, says let's go for a jetski safari, find some mantas and snorkel with them.

We didn't find any mantas this time. The following morning, in a small, chic motorboat the general manager and I went to find the resident whale sharks to swim with. We cruised along the outside reef, three guides with us hoping to please.

Sobe saw one and jumped in the water. But the fish slipped away and we didn't see another. In the afternoon I joined the excursion to the neighbouring island. The cultural group passed out coconuts and re-enacted their traditional crafts. There still remained an old lady who could make lace for the libaas.

The other neighbouring island, Fenfushi, is famed for its craftsmanship and antiquities. The old mosque there was built by the same team that built the Hukuru Miski on Male. Its coral carving is said to be just as fine. On the way back we sat on the dhoni roof, sipped wine and watched the sunset to the beat of two drummers. On getting to shore I headed straight off to the spa. The therapists are all from Bali and I had been booked in for a Balinese massage.

The rush from the boat allowed no time to settle in to the 'zen' of the place and I had some sunburn from the snorkeling trips. The cultural afternoon flowed into the night with a Maldivian buffet on the beach. A traditionally dressed waiter folded a white turban on my head as I sat chatting with Dolores, from the management team. As the bodu beru band built up the beat of its complicated rhythm and the unknowable chants grew ever more urgent, we got up and took to the ground in front of them, dancing and turning it didn't matter how.

I went back to my room alone. Boy am I unlucky! No mantas, no whale sharks, the wrong inhabited island, a ruined massage and no girl.

I had a great time being unlucky, how lucky is that?

More Resorts, More Burugas

There are a few things you can be sure of when you return to the Maldives. There will be more resorts, Male will be more cramped and more women will be wearing headscarves. I want to talk about the latter and relate it to the former.

The buruga describes all the varieties of headscarf worn in the Maldives, except for the full-body cover that may or may not reveal the eyes only. The niqab and burka have never been, as far as I can tell, a part of the Maldivian tradition. Yet today you will see Maldivians in these black all-concealing garbs. And the increasingly frequent burugas are getting longer and blacker. There is a general sense, coming from above and from peers, that a woman should be veiled in order to be 'good'. Not to be veiled is becoming the decision, rather than to be veiled. It is almost a stand, a position against the prevailing winds.

The re-emergence of a strong religious drive tied to nationalist sentiments is also found in American Christianity, Indian Hinduism and Sri Lankan Buddhism. Islam has a pan-nationalist sentiment, led today by Arabs in general and Saudi Arabia in particular.

The effect of extreme positions, or fundamental positions, is to pull the middle out. The radical positions held by Islamists in the Maldives has shifted the consensus of what is correct practice. A more conservative and illiberal interpretation is becoming the new middle ground. The spread of burugas most obviously reflects this.

On the one hand, Maldivians, aware that they live in an isolated nation of small islands, have welcomed visiting Islamic scholars, sought to keep them and learn from them. When Ibn Battuta arrived in Male in 1344, for example, he was showered with presents and promises by the Sultan, for he was an Islamic scholar who had studied in Cairo and Mecca. He was persuaded to take up the post as Chief Qadi of the country.

On the other hand, Maldivians have an ancient cultural heritage retained and influenced by their isolated island existence. And like all islanders, they are both very hardy and suspicious of, and resistant to, change.

Former president Gayoom was himself a scholar of Al Azhar University of Cairo and, as such, was equipped to argue with and control the qadis if they overstepped their cultural and religious realms into the political one. The context - the social and political milieu - was also one that leant itself to control. With the coming of the Maldivian Democratic Party and Free Speech, those holding extreme views have been able to proclaim them vociferously, though they sometimes impinge on the democratic rights of others and even stray into hate-speech. Counter-arguments are made in the cafes, on banners, on websites, blogs and comments to online articles.

The extreme Islamist views come with Arab cultural mores that are out of place in the Maldives (the burka, for one obvious example, extreme physical punishments another). President Nasheed has spoken up against intolerant speeches. More tellingly, when he returned from the United Nations climate conference he said in plain language that the Maldives was a mature country able to make its own mind up and take its own decisions. He said, when referring to the Maldives' recognition of Israel, that there are Arab issues that are not Maldivian issues and do not need to be.

The shift from a traditionally moderate religious consensus has not had an impact on tourism yet. Having said that, a member of parliament last month tabled a bill to outlaw the importation of alcohol and pork. It was a peculiar and futile gesture that was quickly rejected. But though 53 members voted against the bill, 15 voted for it and 4 abstained.

With alcohol, pork and bikinis restricted to resort islands, all is well; straightforward and uncontentious. But new tourist developments muddy the water. Guesthouses are now free to open on any inhabited island, 'City Hotels' are to open on a few such islands, as are Training Resorts. There are tourist establishments associated with new regional airports, there are two 'Lagoon Resorts' by inhabited islands and there are marinas planned.

Cognisant of the possible problems, and under pressure from the already open Holiday Inn on Male, the government published a new alcohol regulation on the Ministry of Economic Development's website back in November '09. It was withdrawn 5 days' later. It was reissued, unchanged, in February this year. After nightly rallies and emotional speeches in Male, it was once again withdrawn after a few days.

Under the regulation, tourist hotels in inhabited islands with more than 100 beds (that is, all the City Hotels and Training Hotels but not the guesthouses) would be allowed to sell alcohol to foreigners. The regulation also allowed the sale of alcohol in bars of international airports (not domestic airports), picnic islands and yacht marinas. All very reasonable, you would have thought. And the regulations for the bar in the Male Holiday Inn were frankly draconian (passports at the door, cctv, breathalisers). But reasonable or draconian, nothing has been found to be acceptable. Whether or not the anger and outrage displayed represents the will of the majority, it has been enough.

So there we are, tourism is expanding into inhabited islands just as the inhabitants are becoming more religiously conservative.

Male at rest, Friday Sunset

It's a densely, densely populated metropolis but if anyone can remain calm, it's a Maldivian. Friday around sunset is the most relaxed time of the week. Here are a few moments from a walk home this evening. Snapped on the iPhone.

Copenhagen Accord

An article in the Guardian gives credit to the British Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, for returning to the main hall at 4am, refuting the speech of the Sudan delegate and bringing the rebelling small countries round, by restating the amount of money pledged to combat their climate change issues. It was touch and go whether  the summit would end with no deal at all or a weak one.

A blog on oneclimate.net direct from the hall, gives another angle on those dramatic hours. There is no mention of Ed Miliband. The key moment, in the writer's mind, occurred at around 5am when the hall stirred and the Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed took the microphone. Nasheed was, it seems, the only head of state to stick it out throughout the night.

Would he side with his Tuvalu colleagues and the Sudan line? Among the developing nations and small-island states, he is recognised as a, possibly the key representative. Nobody would be ignorant of the fact that he addressed the United Nations climate change summit between the speeches of President Obama of the United States and President Hu Jintao of China. If he rejected the deal on the table, there was a very good chance that many other developing countries would have rejected it too (whatever the speech of Ed Miliband had achieved). And Copenhagen would have ended without a deal.

He did not side with the rebels. Apparently he was passionate yet calm and logical as he asserted it was best for his country to move forward with the unambitious and non-binding deal that was on the table. Though he greatly respected his colleagues' objections, he believed it was in everyone's best interest to accept this deal and work to turn it into something more ambitious and legally binding by the end of 2010.

Few have any doubts that the Copenhagen Accord is weak, fewer still doubt it is frighteningly unhelpful to the most vulnerable states. But with the deal comes an agreement to turn it into something legally binding, and hopefully stronger, within a year. The Secretary General stated it should be a matter of a few months.

So what is the deal? The accord makes references to the need to keep temperature rises to no more than 2C, and says rich countries will commit to cutting greenhouse gases, and developing nations will take steps to limit the growth of their emissions. Countries will be able to set out their pledges for action in an appendix. In addition, there are provisions for short-term finance of up to $10 billion a year for three years to help poorer countries fight climate change, and a long-term funding package worth $100 billion a year by 2020.

So the Maldives will get some money to fight the ravages of climate change. But with nothing legally binding, global temperatures will probably rise more than 2C, as major nations accuse each other of being the stumbling block.

No amount of remedial work will keep the Maldives above sea level, however much money is 'invested', if this state of affairs continues. Let us keep the faith with President Nasheed, keep the debate simmering and trust that work behind the scenes over the coming months will put legal flesh on this weakly skeleton.