Kaashidhoo community's example: Live and let live

Liberal Maldivians and Westerners will be pleasantly surprised upon their arrival in Kaashidhoo to notice immediately that something is rather different than when they visit Male' City or the rest of the other inhabited islands of Maldives: Kaashidhoo residents don't stare at you.

It's not that they are ignoring you or that they don't care about you: rather, the Kaashidhoo community is one of the most caring of Maldivians, even if you happen to spend just one day in the island.

Like the completely isolated South Pacific islands you saw in the BBC documentary, Kaashidhoo people's tolerance and liberalism stems from the fact that the island is totally isolated, with the nearest inhabited island Gaafaru more than one and half hours away by boat ride.

Nothing is therefore visible on the horizon, and almost four square miles of jungle, with less than 3,000 people in population, have over the centuries made the island community dependent on one another to such a great extent that everybody would rather turn a blind eye to each and everyone's inherent private "evils" which, naturally being humans, cannot be completely wiped out even with more than 800 years of forced Islamization and Arabization.

Hence, it is the official social rule of each and every islander to mind his own business and never interfere with another person's personal affairs, whatever private opposition and personal opinions one might have about them. Therefore, though Kaashidhoo has all the modern urban "woes" like drugs, even the "unpleasant" elements in the society do not interfere or disturb other people's lives. The pleasant result is that thefts are almost unheard of, and like the innocent Male' of the early 1980s, homes are even now left open unattended and bicycles are never locked however long you leave them out in the open.

But if you are a criminal seeking to take unfair advantage of the openness of this blissful paradise -- for example by committing theft -- then you have broken the golden social code and the people's official policy of non-interference, and the result will be that you will be immediately kicked out of this island because you have disturbed its peace, tolerance and liberalism. This has happened before, I am told, so even the heroin addicts currently in the island do not commit theft but finance their addiction and habit through their own means and leave the other islanders in peace. So, in which other island of Maldives would you find such a community nowadays? I already have half a mind to permanently emigrate to this place -- Alex Garland's fictional The Beach found for real!

And unlike the stuck-up population of Male', since Kaashidhoo is such a small community, nothing remains private, which may be the reason why people don't have the choice of practicing social hypocrisy and therefore everyone is just their true selves and there is no shame felt by anyone even if one happens to be "different" -- like being homosexual.

As long as you too practice the policy of not interfering in other people's business, you can comfortably be yourself and do not have to feel guilty or ashamed of being your true self. So quite amusingly, visitors sometimes erroneously describe Kaashidhoo people as "uncouth" but the reality is that they seem so only because they are brutally honest about everything, most importantly about themselves: men and women treat each other equally and during festivities like Bodu Eid, both men and women equally engage in enacting public entertainment.

Not surprisingly, religious extremism has failed to take hold in the community despite continuous visits by Male's conservative sheikhs, thanks due to the island's natural isolated setting I earlier mentioned which makes it naturally impossible for any extremist views of any kind to take root in the community.

For instance, women who are pious and wear the headscarf, are still moderate and find no problems in dancing to bodu beru or other traditional entertainment during festivities in front of the whole community -- unlike the women Minivan News' Eleanor Johnstone encountered during the latest Bodu Eid festival in a northern island who blamed the headscarf as their excuse of being unable to perform in front of men. I don't blame religion; rather, I think the problem is with how you interpret religion, and it definitely varies from community to community as my experience of Kaashidhoo during the latest Bodu Eid was very very different from Eleanor's experience.

So I was pleasantly amused when, after spending just a few days with relatives from my mother's side in Kaashidhoo during the latest Bodu Eid holidays, I returned to Male' and immediately upon arrival on Bodu Thakurufaanu Magu, my first reaction was how barbaric and uncivilized Male' City residents were!

The staring and feeling of being constantly (and unfairly) judged every second while you are on a Male' street -- totally unacceptable and unwarranted for. In Kaashidhoo, you don't get that kind of negative energy you get from Male' residents. So you Male' people should really learn from Kaashidhoo people's example...

So after spending just a few days in Kaashidhoo, for the first time in my long 36 years of life in Maldives, it was as if I had discovered both The Beach and Amsterdam in an island called Kaashidhoo, a true paradise where, despite my openly liberal Sufi Islamic views and gay self, I was not only unconditionally accepted but in fact warmly welcomed. For the first time in my life, my being "different" or a "freak of nature" didn't matter, to me or to anybody else, and much to my relief, I finally felt hope for Maldives, and most importantly, for the first time in my life, I finally felt a sense of belonging to a Maldivian community - the Kaashidhoo community.

Natural quarry

Kaashidhoo's futtaru facing the open ocean provides a natural quarry for builders. Locals do not need to mine for sand and coral, a practice that has cost other islands dearly in environmental terms.

In Kaashidhoo one needs only to pay a visit to the eastern side of the island and find natural building materials in abundance. The result is that Kaashidhoo has been environmentally preserved for many centuries while some other inhabited islands have disappeared into the waves through erosion over time.

Vast lands and rich soils

Unlike the neighboring Gaafaru, site of a government wind farm project whose mainstay is fisheries, Kaashidhoo with its vast lands and rich soils makes it one of the Maldivian islands famed for agriculture.

Almost every family owns a farm, with some farms as large as 100,000 sq feet, which is expansive comparing to a Maldives island!

In addition to the farms, families also grow a rich variety of vegetables and fruits in their garden for domestic use. Indeed, with an unending nutritious diet of fresh garden produce, many visitors notice the youthful look of Kaashidhooans, and even the very old -- like some who are in their 90s -- are even now quite active and engage in income-earning and social activities.

Thatch weaving

Almost every woman on Kaashidhoo has perfected the craft of traditional thatch-weaving from coconut palm leaves.

There is no such thing as a "housewife" in Kaasidhoo because almost all women run a "cottage industry" of thatch weaving at their homes.

The thatches are sold mostly to resort islands but many women make a good income from selling thatch to natives, too.

Coral "brick" homes

Maldivians of old build their homes with coral "blocks" -- in tune with the environment. A few such houses, such as the above, still survive in Kaashidhoo.

Almost all homes do not have perimeter walls and Kaashidhoo residents, numbering less than 3,000, still leave their doors open because it is one of the few islands where the traditional community spirit is still strong and people do not engage in anti-social activities such as theft.

Island of the Maldivian Rose

Kaashidhoo is famous for finifenmaa or the Maldivian Rose which is Maldives' national flower.

It is light pink in color and almost all homes have them in their spacious gardens.

The specialty about the Maldivian Rose is that, unlike imported roses, it has a very sweet smell.

The plant is difficult to grow in the Maldives but a Kaashidhoo resident, Ms. Fanke, shared the secret of how to grow it.

"It is how you cut the flower when it blooms which ensures that the plant stay healthy and continues to grow. Do not pick just the flower; cut the better part of the stem and then bend it down and insert it into the ground. You will then find new branches appearing with healthy flowers."

Kaashidhoo's rich soil may also have a key role to play although it has not been known whether any studies have been conducted on its rich mineral content.

Finifenmaa hardly grows in Male' City and most of the Maldivian Roses have to be imported from Kaashidhoo for decoration during special occasions.

The biggest Buddhist temple found in the Maldives

Alas only the remains exist and it is now preserved as a national heritage site. Locals call it the tharaagandu and it has a towering Banyan tree.

Rite of passage

Like the Pacific, the swells coming in from the open sea, due to Kaashidhoo's isolated nature as a natural atoll like Fuvahmulah, the famous Kaashidhoo Channel can prove a fun ride to the adventurous, with dolphins and flying fish trailing your passage, and sometimes an unlucky flying fish flying right into your vessel!

Although you may choose to make your passage on a speedboat, which will make the ride somewhat bumpy as the below video by Maldives photographer Ahmed Zahid shows, Kaashidhooans feel that only if you cross the channel as you are meant to be, on a dhoni, and get the feel of the channel for which it is famed for, then only you have gone through that rite of passage which makes you deserving to see the sanctuary of this isolated paradise.

Kaashidhoo dudes having a good time

The unusual eating habits of Gaafaru* people

*Gaafaru, the site of a government wind farm project, is Kaashidhoo's nearest neighbor - a one-and-half-hour dhoni ride away.

... As I sat on the deck of a large, mostly open-air dhoni, with a small housing in the middle, I was treated to one wondrous sight after another. Adam, two other friends and myself sat huddled together in the cold wind, as we had to leave immediately at midnight to, er, save daylight perhaps, as Gaafaru is some four hours away if you are traveling on a normal dhoni. But our ferry was not normal as it pitched us on the lengthy harbor of the island just three hours into the adventure.

Situated on the fringes of the rough Kaashidhoo channel, Gaafaru’s isolation is complete on a starry night as you travel with no flickering lights evident from any distant island, the darkness around you complete and absorbing. And up there, as wide as the horizon itself, a singular black rain cloud had its edges silhouetted by the fuzzy Milky Way with its brilliant display of billions of stars, some very much alive, and some dying, like a display of fire-works held still in time. Listening to the lines “You and me are drifting into outer space” from the song “X&Y” by Coldplay gave me a wondrous sense of being, but also reminded me of my own insignificance in the wider scheme of things... Read more

Hypnotic Kaashidhoo swamp

Best Viewed Large for the hypnotic effect! I saw this marsh land in Kaashidhoo island... More

Boat hangar in Kaashidhoo

Some of my young relatives were involved in the setup and I was impressed and heartened to know that there are Maldivian youths who are hardworking and supporting themselves... More

Revving up an island back to life

Reincarnation may be an important Buddhist philosophy back in the centuries when the Tharaagandu existed as a temple right in the perimeter of the forest. Today, Kaashidhoo needs such a ‘rejuvenation’ in order to rediscover the vitality of an island neglected for decades and now trying to live up to its ancient glory as a strategic location on an international shipping route.

Like most Maldivians, my ancestors also migrated to Male’ for various reasons. And like most Maldivian youth of today growing up in the concrete and congested capital Male’–which we’ve learned to alternately hate and love at the same time due to its redeeming qualities despite its depressing nature–I “went back” to Kaashidhoo, the ancestral island from my mother’s side, for the first time in my life only as a teen.

Since then over the years I’ve visited the island from time to time but, sadly, mostly to perform some professional engagement or other. It was never a personal trip. Until now. Read more