Maldives: It pays to be shallow

Falling off the map of the world is what the islanders fear most

You cannot see the devastation when the noisy turbo-prop seaplane cuts its engines and plunges alarmingly towards the turquoise waters of the Maldives. The sight of lagoons of variegated blue kick-starts a long forgotten geography lesson on atolls and islands ringed by shallow reefs. It’s the gradual gradient of the underwater reefs that probably saved this Indian Ocean archipelago from the worst of the tsunami that laid waste to the rest of South and South East Asia.

The clear waters where schools of multi- coloured fish and baby sharks nibble at your feet have sustained a tourism industry for 33 years, drawing the well-heeled to high-end resorts and getaways that routinely top the list of 100 must-see destinations worldwide. Post-tsunami, there are two ways to wipe the smile off the face of the gentle Maldivian. One is to postulate that the tsunami has badly affected tourism, to which they will contend, perversely, that the tourists who cancelled en masse are back. The other is to say that since only 82 people died in the tsunami — a mere 20 of the 200 inhabited islands were totally destroyed, another 53 slightly damaged — it cannot be as bad as Indonesia, Sri Lanka or for that matter, India.

“But the proportion of destruction makes us one of the worst affected,” says Mohammad Nasim, general manager of Kurumba, the first resort in the Maldives.

Maldivians are caught between telling the world that all is well in a bid to bring the all important tourist back, while not letting the international community forget that they too are standing in line to receive aid for reconstruction. The island nation has a population of close to 300,000 people. Some 14 islands were evacuated, with nearly 12,000 displaced and another 8,500 moved to other uninhabited islands to start afresh. Said Abdul Hadi, chieftain of Guraidhoo, the worst affected island in the South Male atoll that Gulf News wangled permission to visit: “The dead may be just statistics to the world. To us, because we are such a small community, we know most islanders by name or face.”

Four died on this hitherto prosperous, sun-kissed island when the waves measuring 4-14 feet engulfed the now peaceful cove. All four were children. The youngest was five-year-old Musli, walking home from his Quran class at the time, weaving his way through the dozens of hammocks that now lie mangled and twisted on a once pristine beach. His mother is inconsolable, says Hussain Sharif, a former Maldivian national football star turned tour guide. A native of Guraidhoo who lives in the capital Male, he has taken his wife and young son back to the capital. His mother, unforgiving, unwilling to follow, barely speaks to him when we stop at his home, tucked away between the souvenir shops and tea-rooms frequented by Italian tourists who patronised the once lively resorts nearby of Kandooma, Cocoa Island and Ranafushi.

Temporary camp

“She is angry that I have taken them back with me, she misses my son, but I went crazy with worry when I heard about the tsunami. I was in Male. It took me four to five hours to get on to a coast guard boat to get here. Our house was safe because it’s set away from the beach, but I couldn’t find them, until I got to the Home for the Disabled on the other side of the island. All the islanders, some 500 of them, had found refuge there.”

The next day, the traumatised survivors — women, children and the injured — were ferried to a temporary camp in the capital. The ones who remained were sustained by food and fresh water from the Indian Navy’s INS Mysore and the INS Udayagiri that arrived within 48 hours of the disaster, as well as the largesse of the less affected of the tourist resorts like Universal’s Kurumba and Soneva Fushi further north on the Baa atoll, to name just a few. The United States sent a complement of Marines to restore communications. Bangladesh despatched 60 soldiers to help with clearing debris. Of the 200 inhabited islands on an archipelago of 1,192, at least 87 are resorts. Eight of these including Soneva Gilli in the North Male atoll, and the Taj Exotica in the South Male atoll, popular among the jet set have been badly damaged. Taj has pulled out making people like Elyas, 21, who worked in the hotel’s dive school, and hundreds like him on Guraidhoo and other island communities, unemployed overnight.

In a country where tourism has replaced fishing as the main source of revenue — 33 per cent of the GDP and 90 per cent of the foreign exchange come from tourism — it is vital that it gets back on track. The fishing industry is reeling as well with at least a quarter of the islands losing their entire fishing fleet.

It requires more than high profile visits by celebrities to do the trick. Distances in a country, 96 per cent water, are measured not in kilometres but in the time it takes to get from one island to the other — by boat. Guraidhoo is only an hour by speedboat, two and a half by dhoni, the ubiquitous Maldivian country boat, from the island of Kurumba. This is where former US presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, made a pit stop on the last leg of their tsunami tour. But Guraidhoo was not on their itinerary. Nor for that matter were any of the tsunami-hit islands.

Thankfully for the thousands displaced by the tsunami, the World Bank has allocated $12 million (Dh44 million) for reconstruction, although the Maldives has said it needs $1.3 billion (Dh4.77 billion) in the medium term and $4 billion (Dh14.68 billion) in the long term. Neighbouring India has asked the Maldives for a specific list, says Shashi Gawai, the High Commissioner. Already, a small army of contract labourers from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu , have set up tents donated by Saudi Arabia and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to house the 35 families who have lost their homes. Four more permanent concrete homes are almost complete at a cost of 75,000 rufiah (Dh22 ,940) each. The others must be ready before the onset of the monsoon in a few months time.

For the Dhivehin, as the islanders call themselves, the major fear is falling off the map of the world. As we watch schoolchildren pouring out of the gates of the main school on the island and the sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, Sharif said “We pride ourselves on offering great hideaways. But this is one time, we do not want to be forgotten.”