Writing about the state of affairs in our country on his blog , Simon writes that we lack ambition and foresight. We lack the power of forward thinking. This is the case today and this was the case 400 years ago when Pyrard wrote in his journal:
“In my opinion, it is the easy means of living which renders [Maldivians] indolent and negligent, and this prevents them getting rich; for most of them care only for the wherewithal to live, without ambition, desire, or trouble for aught beside.”
Here are my comments that I posted on his blog:
"Pyrard's observation of Maldivians being indolent and negligent in 1602 when he was held captive in Male', does not add up for me.
That was probably the worst period in our feudal history, when our rulers- the sultans were involved in brutal and messy successions. We were also captured and occupied by the Portuguese. Our people were helpless then as they appear to be now, although there is more outrage expressed now.
If Pyrard had said our rulers were greedy and self-serving and failed to empower our people and improve their lives, that I can accept.
I agree with the problems in our country that you have outlined here and the contradictions imposed on our society. As you said we can sell and serve alcohol to foreigners but we can't have a casino. Both alcohol and gambling are prohibited for Muslims. We have allowed alcohol but cannot allow gambling to foreigners citing religion. These kinds of contradictions are all around us.
As noted by Dr.freex here, it is futile to compare Maldives to Singapore or Malaysia. Few can match our hypocrisies, double standards and injustice when we are a 100 per cent Muslim country.
It is true that our present situation is pathetic, but I don't believe it is because we are born lazy. Take the special majlis amending a constitution that took seventeen years to make. Three years and millions of rupees have spent but still the job is not done. Half the time meetings are cancelled becoz our handsomely paid members don't show up and there is no quorum for the meeting. Does this happen becoz the people are lazy?"
Let us cast our thinking back by two generations, say to the 1950s. This was the period when Maldives did not have mechanized dhoanis and mechanized boats to transport goods and ferry people from island to island. The islanders used sailboats or dhoanis with sail that used wind power to carry their dried fish to Male' where Male' merchants will buy and store them while awaiting shipment to Ceylon by the government. The islanders would buy their provisions and other items from Male' shops and sail back to their island.
For the islanders, it involved hard work. The fishermen set out at dawn in search of bait fish, which were caught and kept alive in a specially prepared compartment of the dhoani and they sailed out to the sea and returned in the evening with the day's catch. Fish would be distributed and the women played an important role in cooking the fish during the night and drying them in the sun for several days.
Maldives did not have tourism those days. For the merchants in Male', life was better than those of the islands, in this centrally controlled economy.
The traditional dhoani built out coconut timber is the most common means of travel in the Maldives. The islanders built their own transport infrastructure, i.e, their own craftsman built their travelling dhoanis by their own design and skills passed on from generation to generation. Today imported timber is used widely in dhoani building. Over the centuries the basic design of dhoani remained unchanged.
Battheli is a type of large multi-sailed ocean going vessel used in the Maldives. It is used for inter atoll transport, as well as overseas travel and trade.
Odi is the local name for large, sea and ocean going sail vessels, used for inter atoll and overseas trade and travel.
For the most part, life on the islands was one of subsistence. The merchants in Male' were more into making money and they had an advantage over the islanders since Male' was the Capital as well as the commercial hub. Even most of the uninhabited islands in the outer atolls were leased to landlords sitting in Male' who in turn subleased them to the islanders for a higher rental.
My feeling is that this is the type of lifestyle that Pyrard referrd to as "the easy means of living which renders [Maldivians] indolent and negligent, and this prevents them getting rich, for most of them care only for the wherewithal to live, without ambition, desire, or trouble for aught beside.”
I couldn't disagree more. Maldivians were hard working people who provided for their families and wanted to give a good life to their children. They did the best they could.
In 1974, the first mechanized dhoani was launched, under a government sponsored project, revolutionizing not only the local boat building industry, but all aspects of the country’s sea transport system.
This was a major transformation and a turning point for the Maldivian economy, its inter island transport system and perhaps its way of life as well.
By this time a Japanese company under a deal negotiated by the government kept three freezer and six collector vessels to buy fresh fish from the fisherman. The fisherman could sell their catch and get paid on the spot.
The first fish canning plant was established on the island of Felivaru, as a joint venture with a Japanese firm, in 1977.
Tourism was introduced to the Maldives in the early 1970s. There were many people who began to see life working on the tourist resorts or serving the resorts as a better opportunity than toiling in the hot sun fishing. As tourism expanded and became the lead industry, fishing gradually took a back seat in the national development of the country.
The tourist dollars and various grants and loans from international lending agencies started flowing in from this time onwards up to now. We have several Maldivian graduates returning from overseas universities and our businessmen are now more preoccupied with making money.
In the past, everyone had to be productive and did something that contributed to the good of society. Today, the very people who endured hardship growing up are overindulging in providing for their children. Some of these pampered children are able to live off their parents wealth even as adults. An increasing number of younger persons are struggling on drug addiction. There are others are trapped in poverty as the country advances, because of the inequitable distribution of wealth.
What is happening during this Ramadan is a good reflection of our current society. We have foreign Imams preaching, we have political parties Imams preaching, in fact we have more preaching than at any other time in our history. Yet we find that every Ramadan breaks the previous Ramadan record for criminal behaviour and robbery. This cannot happen from a people who are just laid back and lazy.
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8 comments:
Maybe laid back and lazy are not right words. But i find that we are an ignorant bunch. We tend to ignore serious stuff. Things which do affect our lives. This might be just due to the repressive environment we all have been brought up and it has been carried through generations like a gene which has written up its code in them.
Very recently i got the opportunity to talk to a war veteran from New Zealand. He was based in Ceylon during the 1930s and he told me how hard working Maldivians are. He told me the stories of vessels going to Male' for trade and meeting envoys from Male' who went there. He describes the fish they bought as being "hard solid" but "tasty". He did tell me a story of a voyage he took to Maldives back then in rough seas. He did tell me stories of "tough people" living in Maldives back then.
Also i did hear the dealings from the Japanese vessels that took place. It seems that people were happy from what they got from the Japanese. I am sure the ones who brought them in would have got a damn good deal too. As they were buying fish for at a much more higher rate than now. There are stories of inside dealings too.
Hi anonymous
It is true that Maldivians tend to overlook the serious issues, I can't quite figure out why. What baffles me is why the majority of us walk away from problems, without even acknowledging them even if we took no action to put it aright. We have become a cynical and disinterested society.
In the past we worked hard to improve our living and uplift society. Some where down the line as we came forward, we have lost that work ethic and discipline. Now we work hard motivated by greed and selfish reasons.
I think the most important observation that Pyrard made is elusive due to the nature of the way it is written. He says that "it is the easy means of living" that rendered us indolent and so on. This is the part that is striking and very true even today.
This "easy means of living" comes from a mentality of living on subsistence and being used to it. We are happy with what we get: the bit of rice from Dhon Ahamma's place, a bit of lime from Ismail Fulhu's and so on so forth. I was like that even when I was young.
The boat building and fishing was largely isolated to some islands. Not all were involved in the boatbuilding and fishery. My father, talking about the island where he was exiled in the 80s noted that, the islanders were so indolent that they never went out fishing although they could, they were suffering from acute boredom, and they survived on just the bare minimum.
It is also a strange kind of sense of submission that we're born with that adds to our list of problems. Many of us, until very recently (perhaps not more than decade), feel we are indebted to our superiors for whatever measely provisions we are given. As recently as 3 years ago, a friend from an island confessed that he saw a bleak future for his island due to this mentality of the inhabitants. They were, he said, either too lazy or waiting for a high power to provide them as a result of their prayers and believed that Maumoon was their savior - almost in a divine sense. (The topic of which will be one of my next posts).
I think history teaches us that although Male' was the commercial centre there were people of the south who traded with neighbouring countries - whose hard work in taking the next steps forward on their own probably lead to so much trouble is well recorded. So, yeah, not everyone is lazy and apathetic.
So perhaps this "easy means of living" has now being transformed into criminal activities?
I'll give you a very good example why we are lazy. Our car, until it was outlawed to do, was washed and cleaned by a Bangladeshi fellow. He earned Rf30 per wash. We had the washed twice a week. He said he washed more than 5 cars daily - 10 on a good day. Do the maths on how much he earned. Now imagine an unemployed Maldivian being so enterprising. I bet you cannot. You see it's easier to steal a mobile phone or stereo system and sell it in the black (and secrecy) than have society label you as a hardworking car-washman.
This is the easy means of living and this is our mentality.
Simon
The case has been made for the easy means of living that we are accustomed to through the ages.
We did work hard for our subsistence and it appears there was no compelling reason to push for more than that. While one group of people are stuck at that level, others more enterprising are making the most out of society whether it is in business or public service.
Those who are in positions of influence or in business seemed to be preoccupied to enhance their own personal interests. This attitude permeates to every level of society and everyone is in a manic rush to make a quick buck by hook or crook.
It defies logic why a person would do a dangerous stunt to climb five storey high building (as happened in my sister's place) n rob a laptop and mobile phone instead earning his living wage legally by washing cars or doing any other job.
I heard recently there was undertaker who was dismissed for soliciting favours from relatives of deceased persons. It seems the undertaker was asking for payments in return for services and good deeds that he has done for the deceased.
For some reason, we have lost our discipline and our pride doing a job to earn our living. For some people that has transformed into working hard in criminal activity.
i agree with simon, we maldivians are always looking for the easy way, we dont want to go work as a car-wash man as he says. it would be an insulting thing in the face of the maldivians. thats the reality
frozen solid
Thanks for your opinion. We need to find a way to reverse the easy living mentality.
Very interesting subject indeed. Here are my two cents...
Early Maldivian's had to invent and reinvent continuously just to survive. For example, they had ot make rope to tie something; they had to build boats just for communication and subsistence. That got their brains working.
Nowadays, this natural curiosity to experiment and get results is killed first at home, through behaviour control, then at schools, where individual thinking is not given due credit, but rather copy and paste seems to be the order of the day.
After that, when one leaves school, he or she further gets molded by organizational culture, which as it is, lacks the same qualities that you all are discussing to fix.
In my opinion, it is the failure to experiment and seeks results that's creating this problem. So when this process is ignored or discouraged, we set out to do something, not knowing what we want to do, how we want to do it, and what we want in return - results.
Next, we're are taught not to fail. However, how could one succeed without ever failing? Hence, I believe it's a simple process failure somewhere down the line!
hi anonymous
You are right. Early Maldivians were very ingenious and did everything to survive and improve their lives. They were creative thinkers.
Now parents and the school teaching system is failing to spark off that creative imagination in young minds.
Our corporate culture is set for bosses to make maximum profit by squeezing out the workers. The working habits are rigid and there is no initiative to explore new ideas.
Making mistakes is part of the process of learning to do things better. Many successful people have failed at some stage in their career. They were flexible, maintianed focus and persisted untill they eventually succeded.
Businesses are forced by competitive forces to embrace these changes to suvive and be able to compete. Though these changes are slow in coming to our society, they are taking shape and they cannot be held back.
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