Hope you all like it!

“…one of the major issues all my students talked about is resistance among newsroom leadership – editors and publishers. Even if the journalists support and understand the principles being taught, they consistently tell me they cannot apply them,” Rath said. “This is a very, very serious problem that needs to be addressed.”

We encountered this same phenomenon during our workshops. It seemed like our students were very responsive, smart and eager to learn everything we taught them. Yet afterward, when we looked at the media coverage on TV produced by our students, nothing much had changed. The B-roll still had no natural sound, the excessive zooming and panning was customary, and the political stories lacked the human connection. And, all too often, the news reports only covered one side of the story.

The reason for the lack of improvement, our students said, was that the management didn’t want them to make changes. The management, then again, told us that the staff was just being lazy.

Sigh.

While it’s great that trainers (like us) have come from other countries to improve news coverage in the Maldives, I think it’s about time for the Maldives’ people to take some initiative. That’s the only way anything is ever going to change. The journalist should apply the skills they’ve learned in the workshops.  And yes, the management should encourage them to do so and support them in every way.

In the words of Tiare Rath:

“You’ve got a free press. Now how are you going to establish that press, how are you going to build its credibility, and what kind of values do you want it to have? You can technically do whatever you want – but a free press means having responsibility.”

“Ooohhh, I’m so jealous! I’ve heard those beaches are amazing!”

“Haha, no way! Maybe I’ll apply to teach journalism in Seychelles… or Mauritius!”

“The Maldives! That’s where I want to go on my honeymoon.”

Well, while it’s true that this image of the Maldives isn’t entirely wrong, we’ve come to the conclusion that the Maldives is, in fact, four countries in one. Here are the four types of islands that you’ll find in the Maldives. They all have their pros and cons.

1) The Maldives of the resort islands

-Yes, these resort islands offer the postcard views we’ve all seen before: turquoise waters, strikingly white sand, swaying palm trees, cute bungalows built over water… and it’s here where you can live the high life: indulge in the extravagant buffets and sip colorful cocktails as you watch the sunset. Ahh, the life.

Pros: All the above, plus often amazing snorkeling as the reefs are well maintained (some resorts are even experimenting with growing new coral reefs electronically).

Cons: The cost. These resorts often cost several hundred dollars per night. Luckily we have made friends in high places and have managed to arrange several free visits to some amazing resorts! Another con is the lack of local flavor –these resorts could be anywhere: Seychelles, Mauritius, Thailand or Tahiti.

2) The local Maldivian islands

Most would agree that this is the real Maldives. On the local islands you’ll see everyday people doing traditional everyday things: old men pushing a dhoni (a local boat) into water, women weaving thatched roofs out of palm tree leaves,  people hanging out in “jollyfattys” (kind of like hammocks, but only big enough for you to sit in. The name probably hints at the type of person you’ll become if you spend too much time in one…). You’ll notice that most women will wear a headscarf (called a buruga here) and older men will wear a skirt/kilt of sorts.

Pros: It’s easy to meet local people, most of whom are really warm and friendly. Seeing the locals go about their daily business is also really interesting and you never know what you’ll see next (like fishermen returning from sea with a huge catch!). These small island Maldivians are also are eager to teach you some Dhivehi words. If you manage to arrange a local house to eat in, you’ll get to try some of the tastiest Maldivian food there is (forget greasy restaurant food!): fish curries, home-made “chili-onion-tuna” mash called mashuni and Indian-style roshi bread. And if you are nice, the local may even invite you for a delicious fish barbeque!

Cons: Fuggehdabbout swimming in pristine waters. The beaches often serve as a trash dump for the local islanders as you can read here. The same people that used to throw their fish remains and coconut husks in the sea are now throwing in baby diapers, plastic bottles and clothes that have become unfashionable. Even if you find some trash-free stretch of a beach to swim in, wearing a swimsuit is not allowed. You’ll have to go in with all your clothes (but don’t worry, you’ll get used to it soon enough. And swimming with clothes on also allows for extra spontaneity –if you feel a sudden urge to take a dip in the turquoise waters, there’s no need to go home first to change into your swimsuit!).

3) Picnic islands/uninhabited islands

If you ever wanted to pretend to be Robinson Crusoe, these islands offer the best opportunity for such existence. Empty beautiful beaches, palm trees, coconuts, the most turquoise waters you’ve ever seen. Just you and the nature. (And some sunbeds, if you happen to visit a well-kept picnic island. This usually means that you have to pay $10 for the ranger to help maintain the island. Oddly enough, Maldivians themselves have to pay a few dollars more than tourists!)

Pros: These islands offer beaches as nice as the resorts, without the canoodling German and British couples. If you go mid-week, you’ll most likely have the island all to yourself as Maldivians only come here on weekends.

Cons: These islands are a bit hard to get to, unless you have some local friends. Even then, you’ll need to rent a dhoni, which can be pricey if you are by yourself ($60 for the day). Also, even the picnic islands (uninhabited islands that have a caretaker) sometimes have their share of trash as picnicking people leave some behind or the ocean washes a ton of water bottles on the shore.

4) Male’

Oh, Male’, Male’, Male’. We hate you and we love you. The second most densely populated capital in the world (or so), Male’  is a place like no other. Here you’ll see what it takes to squeeze 100,000 people and thousands of motorbikes into one square mile.

Pros: If you like shopping, restaurants and cafes, Male’ is as close to city life as you’ll get in the Maldives. It also has a sea wall to protect the island from big waves (a good thing to have, in case there’s any risk of a tsunami approaching). The beach is okay (though man-made) and there are tons of people in Male’ for you to hang out with, both friendly Maldivians and expats from all over the world. This is also the hub of local politics and all the drama associated with it. Though there are no bars or discos, the city has a few pretty cool restaurants, such as the Holiday Inn rooftop bar/restaurant that has an infinity swimming pool overlooking Male’. The French-influenced Aioli is another nice place to go for dinner. Eating out is also relatively cheap here, so that’s a bonus. And for those who crave a beer here and there, Hulhule Island Hotel on the airport island is just a short boat ride away. It’s the only place outside the resorts where alcohol is legal. And although the constant stream of motorbikes can stress you out, we have to admit that riding in the back of one is pretty exciting!

Cons: Male’ is about as un-idyllic as a tropical island can be. The buildings obstruct your view of the sea, the motorbikes and cars are constantly trying to overtake you and, as the city is ever-expanding, you’ll never be far from the noise of construction. Life here can also get a bit claustrophobic, as there are no wide open spaces, other than the football stadium and another set of sports fields. The movie theater only plays Maldivian movies, and even those pretty rarely. A random observation: The Male’ people seem to clear their throats and spit a lot more than people on local islands.

So there you go, take your pick! Or better yet, do as we did –visit all the four different Maldives! It’s hard to name a favorite, as we have had some pretty awesome times in each!

It’s an island of about 2000 people – a 30-minute seaplane ride north of Male’, the Maldivian capital – and it takes about five minutes to walk from one end to another.

In the Baa Atoll Education Center, we were greeted by a group of 15 young students who were incredibly eager to get hands-on multimedia training.

In an intensive week-long workshop, these bright minds whipped up their first videos and Vuvoxes that we found oh-so impressive! From day one, we worked on an outline of stories for a new school blog, talked about what makes a good story and then swiftly moved on to simple steps to make an amazing video. Ideally, we wanted to cover way more ground that we did – but we had a limited amount of time. The results were impressive nonetheless.

At night, we worked with teachers and administrative personnel from the school – imparting our excitement for the upcoming blog and discussing a number of tips for how it could be managed and structured. Unfortunately, we ran into some Wordpress database issues which slowed our progress somewhat, but we will post the link here once everything is up and running.

All in all, a friendly reception and extremely bright students. We wished we could have stayed longer!!

These are possibly the future bright journalists of the Maldives!

Football Championship Practice from BAEC on Vimeo.

Netball Championship Practice from BAEC on Vimeo.

Our claim to fame!

(Full disclosure: the reporter was also the IT guy at the school where we were teaching.)

Check out the piece here!

I wish we could have held this lesson in front of all of the Maldives, as it’s evident that there are major communication issues going on in this country. (I’m sure even some of the political turmoil is due to misunderstandings and could have been avoided. Instead, it is now escalating further.)

Here’s yet another example of a recent confusing conversation.

We: “Can we go swimming in the swimming pool?”

Hotel staffer: “Yes.”

We: “So the swimming pool been fixed?”

Hotel staffer: “Yes.”

We: “Oh really? The repair man came to fix it?

Hotel staffer: “No.”

We: “Oh, so it’s still broken?”

Hotel staffer: “Yes.”

We: “So we can’t go swimming?”

Hotel staffer: “No…sorry.”

Hmmm… so no pool for us then. :/

But at least we finished the workshop! Here we are with five out of our 20 students on our last day. The Maldivian groups seem to have a tendency to dwindle down after the first few days, no matter what the topic of the workshops…  though in this case the lack of students present on the last day was also due to the political turmoil. Many of our students were out covering the news for their respective TV channels.

Afterwards we also invited the students out for “jelly” on Saturday night, thinking that we were being very Maldivian in our lingo. After all, there’s this place called “Wow Juice” in Male’ that seems to be a very popular hangout and they sell little juices with bits of jelly… and there are a few other similar places. Thus we thought that a jelly juice was the normal thing to drink.

Instead our students started laughing and said that they would usually just say “let’s meet for coffee,” even if that’s not really what you’ll be having. “But we say that we are having coffee, not jellies,” they pointed out.

Fair enough. I guess that proves that the Maldivians aren’t the only ones that have trouble communicating sometimes.

In the end we ended up meeting up for dinner and had a nice evening together! Hopefully we’ll be able to keep in touch with these future Maldivian superstar journalists!!

Photographing the president. In Dhivehi, conversation seems to work.

Come as a journalist to the Maldives and you’ll soon learn that, despite all the good-naturedness of the people and their constant smiles, communication is really not their strongest virtue.

In the four weeks that we’ve been here, we’ve had our share of mind-numbing and hair-pulling conversations like the one above. In that particular case, I had already suspected that they answer “Yes” when they want to agree with you – regardless of whether what you’re saying is positive or negative.

But we’ve also noticed – and speaking with a few expats who shared their stories – that precise communication is something we had been taking for granted before coming here.

Such was the case of the omelette versus scrambled.

A typical restaurant breakfast will usually include a simple egg-only omelette. [Learning to navigate my way around spicy foods has been quite a challenge (and merits its own post) but suffice it to say that these non-spicy minimalist eggs have been a welcome staple of my diet.]

But one morning, I wanted scrambled eggs for a change. I explained my choice to the waiter, with whipping wrist motion and pointed to the “Scrambled eggs” item on the menu. “No omelette,” I said. “Scrambled.” Whip whip whip. “See?”

“Yes. Eggs. Yes. OK.”

“Do you understand? Scrambled.”

“Yes, yes. OK.”

Off he went.

Sure enough I ate yet another omelette that morning.

What should often be a “I didn’t get that, please repeat” is usually only a friendly smile, a nod and a “Yes.” So, you leave the conversation thinking all is clear when in fact, the only thing that’s clear is that – clearly – there will be a misunderstanding.

Mirva and I have done a lot thinking about why this is. At first, we had blamed it on the language barrier. But a good percentage of Maldivians speak a really decent amount of English. Even when we taught a seminar to 12-year-olds, they expressed themselves surprisingly well and seemed to understand everything we were saying.

Then we ran into this: a tapped phone conversation between two politicians. And we gasped. So, THIS is why communication here is so difficult. Sure, you might say, they were talking in code so as not to be obvious. But read this extract:

MP ‘Kutti’ Nasheed: I need some cash.

MP Gasim Ibrahim: Yeah, ok… How much?

MP ‘Kutti’ Nasheed: I need it very much.

MP Gasim Ibrahim: Have you got someone to come over here?

MP ‘Kutti’ Nasheed: Here, at this time, there’s no one.

MP Gasim Ibrahim: Yeah it is…

One hundred Maldivian Rufiyaas to anyone who can understand that conversation. AT ALL.

Sure enough, our Journalism students could. To them, it was a pretty normal way of talking. It made sense in Dhivehi, they said with a shrug.

“Wow,” we thought. “Yes, it didn’t.”

During our three weeks here we’ve met up with…

-The British editor of Minivan News, JJ Robinson, as well as their main reporter Ahmed Nazeer, a motivated and experienced journalist (despite being only 18 years old!).

-Representatives from the Maldives Journalist Association, including the association’s president Hiriga Zahir.

-Staff from the president’s press office

-The ministers of information and tourism.

-Various local journalists working for such TV stations as DhiTV, VTV, TVM (TV Maldives) and reporters working for a selection of Dhivehi-language newspapers.

-The dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Maldives College of Higher Education

-And many everyday people working in various fields, consuming Maldivian news

The funny/confusing thing about having all these meetings is that everyone seems to tell us different things! Others say the media here is about as free as it could be (considering it’s a Muslim country and saying anything negative about religion won’t be tolerated). Others say that the government is constantly trying to limit this freedom by pressuring the media to not say anything negative about the government.

Also, almost everyone in media is complaining that the Maldivian audience sees their particular media outlet as being biased, either supporting the ruling party or the opposition — well, that’s what you get when your media outlet (as well as every other publication/TV channel in the country) is owned by a politician! It’s hard for people to perceive you as being objective when the owner of your TV channel is a well-known opposition parliament member or a minister from the ruling party. Just sayin’.

Ahhhh, only in the Maldives. We’ve come to the conclusion that this just might be one of the most polarized countries in the world, when it comes to just about everything. Everyone has their own strong opinion, and it’s always either A or Z -never something in the middle, like the letter L.

But then again, they do say that young people are the most idealistic and the least likely to compromise as they only believe what they want to believe. And the Maldives is one of the youngest democracies in the world. So I guess it’s only natural that its a country of political extremes.

Oh, another person we’ve encountered in the Maldivian media scene is President Nasheed himself! We saw him at a press event in the island of Maafushi. He was there to open up a remodeled school for “notorious” children, as the Maldivians put it (i.e. kids behaving badly). Here you can see Mariana in action, snappin’ away!

I say “more environmental” because I’m referencing to the Maldives’ trash island, Thilafushi. The trash disposal system in the Maldives seems to be about 100 years behind Singapore, if this article that calls Thilafushi a “toxic bomb in the ocean,” is anything to go by.

Thilafushi is basically an island made of trash, built on top of a lagoon. That’s where all the trash from the capital island Male’ and nearby atolls is dumped. There’s no recycling system in the Maldives and all the trash is just put into one big nasty pile (or multiple piles, to be exact).

According to the Blue Peace article, “Thilafushi lagoon fill, with used batteries, asbestos, lead and other potentially hazardous waste mixed with the municipal solid wastes, is an increasingly serious ecological and health problem in the Maldives.”

The problem with Thilafushi, unlike with the Singaporean better-planned counterpart, is that “toxics chemicals can easily seep out into the coastal zone and enter into the lower level in the food web, algae, zooplankton, and fish. Once these toxics chemicals are released it is very difficult to remove them from the food web and can end up on our dinner plate in fish or lobsters.”

So that’s great. Who knows how many toxic chemicals we’ve ingested in the tuna we’ve eaten here for the past three weeks (I don’t even dare to think about the amounts of  toxins the Maldivians have ingested as they have lived here all their lives!).

Another thing about the trash island is that it’s surely a terrible eye sore! We haven’t ventured there ourselves yet (though we hope to do so soon!), but we saw a similarly sad sight in Maafushi, a local island we visited recently.

The “landfill” there was basically one of the beaches. All the abandoned clothes, paintings, food scraps and plastic containers were just lying there, half in the water, half on the island. The trash covered an area about 30 meters long, and three meters wide. Apparently the trash is picked up from there about once a year and taken to Thilafushi.

Yeah, since that’s a much better of a solution.

(One can’t help but wonder how the owner of that bicycle feels about seeing his broken bike just lying there, month after month. Hopefully he would feel guilty and take it back and fix it. Who knows, it was probably not even broken before but just thrown away since the owner bought a motorbike! That wouldn’t surprise us one bit…)

Meet the first class of Journalism students in the Maldives.

This workshop has been the most fun yet — we’ve had to pack years of training into one week.

The way the curriculum works here is that the first year is dedicated to Dhivehi (the local Maldivian language) and English, History and Civics. Only after two semesters do students begin to learn the basics of journalism.

So, it was fun and exciting to talk to these guys about, oh, everything! Web tools, video shooting and tid bits of editing, photography, and Mirva’s extensive freelancing knowledge. And they were super eager to learn!