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.