Water shortages, ‘four-gear gifilis’, ‘futtaru’ garbage dumps and ‘transshipment ports’

Waking up to the first cock-a-doodle-doo only to stand in the early morning sun for hours on end in order to fill a 5 litre container with clean drinking water is becoming almost an annual ritual towards the end of every North-east monsoon for Shameema and hundreds of mothers like her, eking out their existences in their small villages. Shameema is not from a war-torn Afghan village but from Maldives where per capita income is almost ten times that of Afghanistan. Her island of Mulhadhoo, registered home of 350 people, located in the northern Ihavandhippolhu of Maldives is one of 60 odd islands to which her Government is contemplating on supplying reverse-osmosis drinking water on board small boats, after a prolonged dry spell.

Like most Maldivians living outside Male, Shameema and the rest of the eighty odd residents of the Mulhadhoo store their rainwater harvested from their corrugated iron roofs in polyethylene kalhuhan tanks; dispose their waste onto a dump on the seaward futtaru side of the island; and defecate into holes dug, as-and-when-nature-calls, on public beaches or ‘four-gear’ gifili latrines.

Meanwhile an army of Maldivians, mostly men anointed by their mighty political parties and financed by deep-pocketed bigwig resort-owners are preparing for their ritual once-in-every-five-years onslaught on islands like Shameema’s Mulhadhoo. This year an unprecedented 465 of them, sipping Italian Lavazza espressos in trendy cafés in Male or savoring the taste of an exotic vilaathu-sherbet in one of Maldives’ top-class luxury resorts, are meticulously planning their onslaught. Their arsenal will comprise of, among other things, an ostentatious display of verbose rhetoric on democracy, human rights, accountability and several other clichéd but little understood terms. There will also be a fool’s paradise of desalination plants that would, so they say, ensure a copious supply fresh water to all the households; diesel generators that would keep the fans and air conditioners running in houses with corrugated iron roofing sheets exposed to 12 hours of merciless equatorial sun to create an ambience that could perhaps be the envy of people living high up on the Swiss Alps. And there will also be an abundance of brand new 6 cylinder Yanmar engines that would propel fishing vessels out to the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean to enable diminutive weather-beaten fishermen to catch a glimpse of the mythical ‘minikaaraajjey gaskara’.

Shameema is no stranger to the chicanery of the Machiavellian planners. She knows that in a few weeks time she would be unable to stretch a leg without poking either a ‘rayyithunge khadhim’ or one of their lackeys. And though Shameema portrays an outward sense of nonchalance, she has a secret little reason to celebrate as well: the ephemeral treasures that come along with the politicians. The last time she was very lucky to grab a handful of those notes adorned with pictures of ‘medhuziyaaraiy’. But she remains unimpressed and nonchalant. And so are the majority of the people of Ihavandhippolhu and the rest of Maldives, for their taste for fantasy desalination plants, diesel generators bridges and flats have been cloyed by countless empty promises on phantom projects like the USD 300 million transshipment port that the previous government decided to ‘build’ in Ihavandhippolhu in the run up to the last parliamentary election.

I recently asked a good friend who I consider to be perhaps my small country’s version of Jeffrey Sachs, if he has anything to say about our politicians and Shameemas. His answer is simple. “Don’t put the blame only on the politicians. For as long as we have 142 islands with populations of less than a thousand people, there is no end to the stories of ‘empty-kalhuhan’, ‘four-gear gifilis’, ‘futtaru’ garbage dumps --- and the ‘transshipment ports’ are only a phenomenon deployed, not perhaps to camouflage trickery or finesse evil but to keep hope alive in an otherwise squalid and desolate environment”. As someone who as a child only accidentally escaped from the world of ‘fenthaangi/four-gear gifili’ induced Ascariasis,; and after thirty years, is still morbidly terrified of those horrid parasites that, ahem, creep out of the rectum after a spoonful or two of that slimy abhorrent stuff called ‘antipa?’, I can’t find any reason to disagree with him.