In Male'

[writinghawk]

Back in Maldives for the first time since I finished teaching here two years ago. In spite of the alarming political upheavals, ordinary life in Male' goes on much the same on the surface. (Not far from the surface, the free health care introduced by Nasheed has been reversed, so my landlord is having to pay Mrf1200 per day for hospital treatment

Comments

[kalypso_v]

I was thinking the other day that I missed your reports from the Maldives, though I hadn't realised it was quite so long since they stopped. I'm glad you've got a new Atlas, hope you get your passport back with an extended visa, and look forward to further updates.

[writinghawk]

I picked the passport up without any problem. The friend of a Nepali acquaintance I'd made here, who was going to the Ministry at the same time, was less fortunate. He'd come here on promise of an admin job in a resort, and found the actual job was washing up. He had decided to go home and went to the Ministry to collect his passport - the Indian High Commissioner recently made a statement about the country's habit of holding on to the passports of guest workers as bordering on slavery - only to find that his employer (or 'owner', as the Ministry charmingly like to call them) had collected it the previous day! The Ministry could see nothing odd in this arrangement and said that his only recourse was to go to the Labour ministry and institute a complaint against the employer