Hithadoo SOLV

Painting crew

Clean -swept street

Volunteers

       There is a massive,  mostly volunteer effort to clean up and spruce up Hithadoo before the SAARC Summit  on November 10-11.  All along the Link Road, the paved causeway that connects the western islands of Addu Atoll, I see groups of women clearing brush.   The brush is full of trash.  When I first spotted the women hacking away with hand tools, I wondered how they could make any headway against what looked like acres of jungle and trash.
      People here are fastidious about their houses. One of the first sounds I hear in the morning is sweeping.  Women sweep the dirt streets outside the walls of their houses free of dead leaves and sticks that might have accumulated during the night.

Roadside brush pile

     The vacant lots and roadsides are another story.  Those spaces are covered with trash, and  the piles of brush that the women rake up there  are laced with plastic.  Roadside piles are shoveled into dump trucks by volunteers and taken away to be burned.  Men in black, the local police force, walk around the fields setting fire to the piles.  
      Since 1971, Oregonians  have flocked to the coast twice a year to clean up our entire shoreline of public beaches.  Those efforts are organized by a group called  SOLV.  The cheerful workers   here remind me of SOLV crews.  In four weeks, the Hithadoo volunteers have cleared almost every space along the Link Road of brush and trash.  It looks great.
  
    

      

Motorcycle Maxine

  

Typical preschool transportation

      In November the already crowded islands of Addu Atoll will be swollen with 5,000 to 6,000 temporary visitors when the annual summit meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is held here.  The heads of state of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives will arrive with  their bodyguards, security forces, and PR people.  China, Japan, and Australia will also send ministers. The islands are buzzing with preparation.

      The meetings will be held in a new convention center at Hithadoo, which is jut being completed.  Heavy equipment crosses the main paved road all day long.We sat outdoors at dinner one night watching big shovels dig out the sandy bottom to deepen a harbor at Feydhoo.  Two men in traditional garb carried long pipes one by one across our field of vision.  A flatbed truck roared by with a full-grown coconut tree, from roots to coconuts to palm fronds.  

    Addu Atoll will capitalize on the summit by having a cultural festival from November 1-11.  For the festival Maxine's preschool is rehearsing a song and dance that  they will perform in traditional Maldives costume. Her teacher asked me ( I thought) if it was all right if they brought a tailor in to measure for the costumes, and did I want to buy some traditional Maldivian jewelry for her to wear?  I committed Courtney to an unknown sum of money; now we are waiting to see what the costume looks like.

       When I picked up Maxine on Monday, her teacher told me that Maxine had been on a motor scooter ride.  They had taken the kids to the tailor to be measured.  Maxine rode behind her teacher on the scooter, in the ordinary way of Saeedhiyya preschool transport.  "I held on to Auntie's waist,"  she said.  Was it fun?  Her smile made me wonder how we will ever get her back into a car seat once she returns to Texas. 

Wings of Desire

      When we first walked into our house, a barefoot old man came out of the kitchen and greeted us in high-pitched speech that sounded to me like Arte Jonson on a tricycle on the old TV show Laugh In.     He finished sweeping the floor and then let himself out with his own keys.  The next day our landlord, Ahmed, came by and asked if we would like to have his father continue to clean the house every day.  Maybe every other day, we said.

Hussein

      Nevertheless, Hussein appears at anytime in the morning, every day except for Friday.  He straightens the bedding, sweeps, cleans the toilets (but not the sinks), and mops the ceramic tiles floors of the whole house.  Wet tiles, or wet soles of slippers, make the floors as slippery as ice,  so we step gingerly when Hussein has been at  work.  The most crucial job he does is to take away the trash.   True to the ignorance of privilege, I have no idea where the trash goes when it leaves the house.
     We had been here two days when Hussein rushed into the house, urgently repeating "two men, bicycles, night." That was all the English he had for the situation, and I speak no Dhivehi.  He grew more alarmed when I didn't understand.  Were two men arriving on bicycles?  Two men coming over the wall?  After lots of nods and shakes of heads, I got it: lock the bicycles in the garage at night.
       Maxine does not quite grasp why I can't just "tell MaSane  don't  spray that rose  smell.  Tell him to take it back to the store."  We hide the air freshener in a closet.

Adhuma at work at corner store

     One evening at dusk Jon beckoned me into the living room.  "Look!  There are two women in our courtyard, inside the gate!"  I went out to met them.  "We're turning on the light. Granddaddy's house," said the younger one. They were  Aminath and Adhuma, Hussein's daughter and granddaughter.  Adhuma  showed me the switch that controls the light above the front gate.  "I can do that," I said.  But no matter what time I go out, evening or morning,  the light is switched on and then off.
     I keep thinking about the angels in topcoats and fedoras in the 1987 movie Wings of Desire.  Maybe Peter Falk will appear in our courtyard next.

Children's Play Park

Queen of the hill

     On Friday evenings the place to be in Hithadoo is at the Children's Play Park.   Around 3 o'clock, when the heat of the day lessens a little, motor scooters begin arriving at the parking area.  Little boys wobble  their first bicycles toward the back gate.  Young parents escort little girls dressed in frilly net dresses and  toddler boys with their black hair slicked back and their clean cotton  shirts.   The kids scramble over the two acres of beat-up play equipment, which neighbors carefully cover with tarps whenever it rains.  In the adjacent field, teenage boys play soccer.

Waiting for a friend

       The Ice Delight does a big business in popcorn, ice cream cones, and orange juice.  A trio of 13-year old girls in headscarves walk  self-consciously back and forth past the ice cream machine where the cute boy is working.  Six men sit at a table, smoking and drinking small cups of coffee.

Waiting for ice cream

     Courtney has  connected with some of our neighbors in the park.  Nasreena, who came to our house to visit one day, is there with her sons. Nasreena does not wear a headscarf.  She worked in Dallas for a year at a hotel, and is eager to go to work again. Ayeda is at the play park too, with her daughter Aisha.   Ayeda  teaches Koran lessons in her  home across the street from us.  Aisha, at age 10,  already covers her head.
     The sky turns pink for a brief time; twilight is short at the equator.  The ground is  pitted and uneven.  I watch my footing.  We walk home through  narrow streets well-lit by tall modern  streetlights.  The white flowers shine on the trees leaning over the house walls.  The air smells like gardenias.  

Washday adrenaline

The Soak

     Some of you domestic goddesses might be wondering how we do the wash here at Wisteria Manor.  We have a large room devoted to laundry.  It's a good thing, too, because washday is quite an enterprise.
       Our turquoise plastic washing machine, brand name "The Soak,'" baffled us at first.  Then we figured out:
Step 1:   Turn on the electricity at the socket.
Step 2:  Turn the dial to "wash."
Step 3:  Turn valve to let tub fill with water.
Step 4:  Watch to make sure the water doesn't get too high;  there is no    automatic shut off.
Step 5:  Add a tiny bit of detergent.
Step 6:  Turn wash timer to 15 minutes.
Step 7:  Turn dial to "drain."
Step 8:  After the water has drained out, turn dial back to "wash."
Step 9:  Turn valve to fill tub with water again.

Jon hanging wash

Step 10:  Watch it.
Step 11:  Turn water off.
Step 12:  Turn wash timer  to 15 minutes.
Step 13:  Turn dial to "drain."
Step 14:  Repeat steps 8 through 13.
Step 15:  Take about 1/4 of the wash load and transfer it into the spin tub.
Step 16:  Balance the spin  tub perfectly.
Step 17:  Set the spin timer to 5 minutes.
Step 18:  Repeat steps 15, 16, and 17 until the whole load is spun somewhat dry.
      Now comes the fun part.  We hang the wash on lines stretched across the room about a foot and a half below  below the 12  foot ceiling.  In the photo,  Jon is hanging wash.  Jon is 5'10" tall and 23 years old.  I am not.
              

Jamal

Jamal

     Ibrahim Jamal is our go-to man for almost everything here in Hithadoo.   It was Jamal who found the house for us to rent,  Jamal who had vans meet us at the airport when we arrived.  Jamal  rented us a car when we discovered, after a week here, that we couldn't get along without one.  He suggested preschools for Maxine based on his grandson's experience, and helped her enroll in Sayeedhiyya.  Then it was on to a tailor he knows for Maxine to be measured for her uniform.  He introduced us to his brother, who runs a grocery store that delivers, and took us to his friend's restaurant for our first Maldives dining experience.
     For the Dynamo project, Jamal  arranged for a forklift to hoist  the SMART-R truck off the ship and onto the dock.  He  hired and trained guards for the equipment, and built fences and guard shacks for them.  He connected Courtney to the local IT experts  to establish connections with Texas A&M and with the other DYNAMO facilities.  He works with the mayor and the local fishermen to make sure the fishing boats don't anchor in the  arc of radiation that the radars emit over the water.  He found a mechanic to change the oil in SMART-R, drove him to the site, and advised us how much to pay him.

My solution

Jamal's solution

    Jamal also solved my princess and the pea problem.  I cannot sleep on my sides because of bursitis, and lying on my back  on the bed here caused charley horses in the muscles of my back.  What to do?  I didn't want to live on painkillers for three months.  The only foam pads I could find were baby crib mattresses.  I placed all the blankets in the house under them. The baby crib material  failed after three nights.  So I called Jamal to ask where I could find thick foam pads.  He came over that evening after prayers, pronounced my mattress as hard as the ceramic tile floors, and said he would ask the landlord to buy a new one.  A week later the new mattress arrived, imported through Male, (as everything is) an hour's plane ride away.
     As I write, Jamal is in India, buying shelves for his family's newly constructed store.  On his way he stopped in Male at the immigration office to extend Maxine's and my visas.  Courtney is in the Maldives on a work visa, but Maxine and I have only the automatic 30 day tourist visas.  In order to extend the visas to our full 90 days here, could we go to the Gan International Airport, which has a customs and immigration office?  Oh, no, that can only be done in Male, and it takes two days, sometimes longer.  Jamal brought us the applications, told us where to get passport photos taken, and carried the paperwork with him  to negotiate the bureaucracy in  Male.
     Thank goodness for Jamal, and for all the guides who helped our greenhorn ancestors when they were strangers in a strange land.

Why we're here

On the spit with SMART-R

      Courtney is a tropical meteorologist who is using radar to collect data about the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO, the first of many acronyms in this post.) The Madden-Julian Oscillation is a 30- to 90-day tropical weather cycle in which  in which periods of enhanced tropical rainstorms alternate with intervals of little or no rainfall.  It originates in the Indian Ocean, near the Maldives, and travels eastward.  It affects many other climate patterns worldwide, including El Nino, Asian monsoons, tropical storm development in the Atlantic, and the Pineapple Express.  The MJO has a kind of domino effect around the globe, affecting fisheries in Chile, agriculture in Bangladesh, and heavy rain and flooding in the Pacific Northwest.
     Courtneys' radar is here as part of a large international project called DYNAMO.  The DYNAMO project will enable researchers to understand more about the MJO, and to produce more accurate  models to help predict changes to our climate.  For more information, charts, and maps, see http://www.eol.ucar.edu/field_projects/field-projects/dynamo.

Port of Hithadoo

  

S-POL with Jon

     Here on Addu Atoll, there are three DYNAMO facilities which will gather data over the next six months.  About three km south of us, on the wharf of the Port of Hithadoo,  is a facility called S-POL, which uses a a double radar with specialized scanning to study precipitation characteristics.   

At Gan Airport, 30 minutes south of us, the U.S. Department of Energy also has two radars to study cloud characteristics and has a group that launches 8 weather balloons. Soon there will be a French aircraft at Gan which will fly into the clouds to measure directly the size and shape of ice particles 

     Courtney runs a meteorological radar that collects information about what is happening inside the clouds and rainstorms that lead to the development of the Madden-Julian Oscillation. Her equipment is called SMART-R, or Shared Mobile Atmospheric  Research and Teaching Radar.  It is parked on spit in the lagoon of the atoll.  Courtney and her graduate student Jon Fliegel keep the radar running to ensure a steady stream of data and then  report and analyze the data. Courtney's students back at Texas A&M also monitor the radar.
       One night, during the heaviest rainfall I have ever heard, Courtney got a phone call from Texas--the radar had stopped transmitting data.  So Courtney drove out to the spit in the the deluge to check on it.  It is quite a feat in the dry daylight to turn a car around at the end of the spit without falling over the edge of the sand where the narrow road has been undercut by about three feet.  Courtney maneuvered the car in the dark and the rain, and found that the problem was in the communications, not the radar.  She came home safely, and SMART-R radiated on.

Our house

Wisteria

      In Hithadoo houses are located  by name rather than by number.  Our house is called Wisteria.  It is surrounded by a seven foot high cement wall.  The wall  forms a courtyard outside our front porch, and encloses a back yard with water tanks in it.
      Inside, the house has nine rooms arranged like a tic-tac-toe board. All the rooms have twelve foot  high ceilings with large fans, and  ceramic tile floors. In the center front section is the living room, with a barrel-shaped ceiling rising to about fifteen feet.  To the left of the living room,  front to back, are Courtney and Maxine's room and bath, a large laundry room, and my room and bath.
     The living room and bedrooms are cooled by large, built-in air conditioners placed high on the wall and operated by remote control.  The dining room can stay tolerably cool by leaving the door to the living room open and running the ceiling fan.  The kitchen is hot.

Living room

       To the right of the living room, front to back, are Jon's room, a bath, the dining room, and our very rudimentary kitchen.  You might notice the lack of a toaster or microwave, and infer that we have to light the stove with a lighter or match.  There is only cold water to the house, and the small refrigerator will need to be defrosted soon. (Not by me.  I gave that up in 1974.)  Next to the kitchen, in the center back of the house, is a large storage room.

Kitchen

    In the very center of the nine rooms, the middle space in tic-tac-toe,  is a room open to the sky.  It is about twelve feet by twelve feet, with ceramic tiles all the way up (about eighteen feet) to the opening.  It has a gravel floor.  Large windows open onto it from the living room, dining room,  and the hall by my bedroom. A  louvered window opens onto it from the storage room.  This center space is our main source of natural light.  It could be a good source of fresh air at night, too, if we wanted to let the mosquitoes in.

Accessible bathroom

     The bathrooms are of a simple design.  The walls and floors are all ceramic tile.  The bathroom floor is 1" lower than the doorway, and the shower is 2" lower than the bathroom floor.  That's it.  Add a few grab bars and a shower stool and it looks pretty accessible to me.

Call to prayer

Mosque one block west

      There are four mosques within two blocks of our house, and they each broadcast a call to prayer five times a day. They sing out in in the local language, Dhivehi, rather than the Arabic I had expected.  Beginning at 4:43 AM, I can hear a far away call begin, then another, then the baritone of our closest, largest mosque.  I have heard as many as six calls to prayer, begun a few seconds apart, in a kind of doppler polyphony.  Maxine does not like loud sounds, and asks many times a day, "When is the mosque going to sing?" Well, at 4:43, and just after noon, and 3:07, and 6, and 8:15.

Mosque two blocks east

     On Fridays, the afternoon prayers are also broadcast from our loudest mosque for about 30 minutes.  On Friday evenings, we hear what sounds like a sermon go on and on.  Thursday afternoons, I'm guessing it is verses from the Koran that I hear.  And sometimes, with no pattern, the close mosque seems to leave the sound system on so we hear the whole service, as we did this morning after the 4:43 AM call to prayer.
    Last night Courtney walked Maxine up the block  to look into the mosque window (from across the street) to see people at prayer.  At home in Texas, Maxine goes to a day care that is connected with an Episcopal school.  She knows what chapel is: "We don't pray, we sing!"  And she will start in with "The wise man built his house upon a rock," complete with hand gestures.   She has progressed from worrying that the mosque is a monster who is going to get her to saying, "I don't mind when he sings.  I don't like it when he talks."
    As for me, I am living in the sort of suspended time that happens around small children.  I like the reminders of the way that those living around me mark time.

Water

Rainwater collection in our back yard

     In the Maldives, the highest point in the country is 7 feet above sea level.  There are no rivers and very few lakes.  Finding safe drinking water is a serious challenge. The tap water is often contaminated and smells like rotten eggs. Many households collect rainwater in large tanks.  Our backyard has several.

Jon's 10 cases of bottled water

     We use bottled water.  Jon Fliegel, Courtney's graduate student who lives with us, is a man after my own heart.  We hadn't been here a half a day when Jon bought 10 cases of bottled water for the house.  What a secure feeling, to have enough water for our needs! I feel guilty about the plastic, but not guilty enough to risk our bellies.
   Of course, learning to use only tap water for drinking, cooking, and tooth brushing is another matter.  We wash dishes in tap water, so we have to be scrupulous about drying every drop of water off of plates and glasses and utensils before we use them.  We wash hands in tap water, so we have to dry them thoroughly before eating or handling food. There is only cold water in the house; any hot water we have heated on the stove.  All of these precautions, added to the heavy heat of our rudimentary kitchen, make cooking, especially with meat, a challenge.  We only eat when we have to.
    My lapses with water have come with brushing teeth.  I must daydream while brushing, and I automatically run the brush under the tap water when I'm finished.  A hard habit to break.  To rescue the brush, I  run it through boiled bottled water, and then let it dry thoroughly before I use it again.  How long do you think it takes a brush to dry completely in this climate?  I've already bought two new toothbrushes from the corner store.
     Roll on, Columbia, I only wish!

    
      

Motorcycle Mama

Maxine and Courtney in front of our house

      Maxine started attending  the Saeedhiyya Preschool on Sunday. At 6:30 AM we slathered her up with insect repellent and Courtney wheeled her to the school. I planned to walk to Saeedyiyya to pick up our brave little scholar at 11.
      The school is about .6 km from the house.  I have a good sense of direction, and we are on a such a narrow island that you can see the ocean from one end of a straight east-west-street to the other.  We studied the Google maps, and I hand-drew a map of my intended route (no printer here.)  Courtney found a good way and called me with directions and landmarks as soon as she had dropped Maxine off.  What could go wrong?
     I set off  through the narrow streets, no street signs of course, and they wouldn't be in English anyway, although on the map the streets are named things like Daisy and Sunset.  I passed the mosque with  the blue wall, and turned at the dead end, and again at the tin shed.  I looked for the TV towers as landmarks, and then began following the map.  No preschool anywhere.

Sayeedihyya preschool

      So I took my map into a small shop and hoped the merchant spoke a little English.  He understood "Sayeedhiyya" and maybe my gesture for little children.  He took the map and walked across the street to  a yard where a man was working on his motor scooter.  After they deliberated for a while, the merchant told me, "He knows," and gestured for me to get on the scooter.   I hoisted my leg over the saddle, and away we went.
     Would it be offensive for me to hold onto the driver's waist?  I had to, so I did.  The man drove slowly and gently around  blind corners, several blocks back toward the way I had come. We putt-putted right up to the door of Maxine's school.  I collected Maxine, and we walked home.

We made it!

Hello, friends and family.  We made it to the Maldives!
       Our 14-hour flight from Houston to Doha in Qatar was easy and almost glamorous, the way flying used to be.  There was plenty of room for Maxine to make a little bed , and for Courtney to stretch out across three seats, and for me to stretch my legs while sitting up.  There were lots of crew in snappy uniforms, who passed out warm wet towels and then served a hot dinner. There was no charge for anything: not drinks, not TV time, not earphones, not pillows or blankets.  Maxine was impressed that we got free toothbrushes.  Contrast that with my flight from Portland to Houston, where the screen 4 " in front of my face flashed "Buy now" and "Swipe now"constantly.
       We slept through the night.  The flight attendants came through three times before breakfast, twice with soft drinks and once with Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream in little cups, but no coffee.  I asked twice ( an Ugly American already, and we're not even there yet?)   Coffee was served with breakfast.   Maxine was always served first, a special children's meal in a yellow plastic lunch box.  We ate,  and then somehow it was evening the next day, thanks to the time change.  I want Qatar Airlines to fly to Houston and Chicago and Baltimore, please.

Maxine and friend (with John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt) at Doha

      Our 5 hour layover in the Doha airport gave Maxine a chance to climb and scramble in the children's play area.  She made a friend who spoke mostly Tagalog.  They colored and pretended for four hours. Courtney and Jon worked furiously on their laptops while I soaked in the sights.  There were Saudi men in long white robes with different styles of headdress, and women in saris of beautiful cloth, and women all in black but always with a little touch of embroidery or finery.  If a woman wore an orange headscarf, her long black robe would have a row of orange buttons.  Or the headscarf and the sleeves would have the same elaborate embroidery.
     Our 6-hour flight from Doha to Male was filled with  international tourists and honeymooners headed for the resorts of the Maldives.   At Male we were met by one of the local meteorology techs for Courtney's Dynamo project.  He shepherded us through customs and Visa registration.  Thank goodness for interlocutors.

Addu Atoll from the air

     The one-hour flight from Male, capital and largest city in Maldives, to Gan in the far south took an hour.  We got our first glimpses of our island paradise out the plane's window.

Courtney and Maxine at GAN

     Gan airport was a British  RAF airbase in the 50s and 60s.  It looks modern and sturdy and spacious compared to the much newer Male airport.  At Gan,  we were finally here at Addu Atoll.  We made it!