10. Going Lanka.

Considering I started getting drawn back into the political situation in my last post, I figured it would be a good idea to separate this out, and amongst the general hilarity briefly mention that a few weeks ago I decided to revoke my volunteer contract with the Ministry of Education following the midterm break. This means I’ll be leaving the Maldives in April, and returning to the UK on 12 June, after a few months maxxing out my location with some spontaneous travelling in South Asia.

I was starting to get real concerns about continuing to volunteer in the current political situation and this ultimately discouraged me from continuing. If you want to read about the sequence of events, stuff is available everywhere. Try the Guardian, Minivan News, and Haveeru. It’s both an interesting and seriously worrying situation, and there’s lots of lessons for the future, especially with regards the Arab Spring states!

Anyway, we had four main link bodies in the IVP programme, and all four were either disbanded or their involvement with us was terminated. The Friends of Maldives – who were supporting and funding us from the UK – were unable to continue their role after 7 February, and their founder and chairman was denounced all over state-run television. The next day there were some properly awkward questions in the staffroom over IVP links to the FOM. The UK High Commissioner and her deputy (the new President’s brother) also resigned in protest and advised us to leave. The Maldives Volunteer Corps was forcefully disbanded after the army and police sacked their offices early one morning. And finally our ‘volunteer’ contracts with the Ministry of Education were transferred to the Ministry of Youth and Human Resources without us being consulted. This may have been because the YHR was considered more institutionally aligned to the new regime than the MOE, which is apparently quite dominated by MDP supporters.

So it’s been a weird reversal in the info and support we’ve been getting. Supporters of the new government, who formerly denounced us as missionaries and imperialists, are now desperate for us to stay – because it shows continuity, and that nothing has fundamentally changed in the Maldives except for the President. Meanwhile, many of the people who put us here have since asked us to leave, to ignore the non-political clause in our contracts, and speak out. They want to show Maldivians the real and significant impact on the ground of the events they describe as a coup, and twenty-four British teachers leaving simultaneously would actually make news. This country has the population of Leicester – it doesn’t take too much to make the headlines. I don’t like being played by either party to be honest, but decided to jump the frying pan.

My resignation was effective from the mid-term break – so I’m happy that I held out and completed at least a one-quarter chunk of the planned year contract – and I would consider going back if elections were held and the volunteer programme reinstated, but I’m not optimistic. So in the meantime, I’m going to Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos etc., for a spontaneous few months of travelling on the borrowed dollar, plunging my overdraft into new shades of red. India was always number one on my list, but who knew that sleeper trains are so oversubscribed with bookings two months in advance? Every train from Mumbai to Delhi had literally 200+ on the waiting list. That will be another year… and for now also means I can keep my blog address!