Rod is a senior engineer at Telecom Australia in Melbourne. I worked with him in Papua New Guinea five years ago, and he's here to investigate radio transmission to the Maldives atolls as part of my efforts to improve the country's radio broadcasting infrastructure. By the way, atoll (atolu in Dhivehi) is the only word the Maldivian language has given to English.

Badurul and Hussain comprise our audio recording team which will tape music, singing, dance, interviews and stories. I’ve lined them up to attend a three-month course in broadcast management in Sydney next year.

We're taking along extra fuel (supplies are uncertain in the north) and, in case fish and fruit are not plentiful, we’re bringing a box of assorted tinned foods as well. The ocean around the Maldives is laden with (a) skipjack but also (b) South Korean fishing trawlers. So you never know whether the fish will be around or not.

Our first stop out of Malé will be the island of Eydhafushi in Baa atoll, with the atolls of Shaviyani, Haa Alifu, Haa Dhaal and Noona to follow. They're known for their beautiful beaches, clear waters, rich marine life, low population and remoteness from the capital. And like the people of the southern atolls, those in the north are regarded with something approaching aloofness by the aristocrats of Malé, the overpopulated central island from which the Maldives is administered and where we overseas development experts live.

MALÉ to EYDHAFUSHI, THURSDAY

One cannot control the state of the sea by extrapolation or wishful thinking. One must accept the situation. The morning dawned another magnificent October day. The sea dead calm and the dolphins out in hundreds. Thrice a platoon sought to play with Sinbad, rushing to it and ahead of it, bucking and twisting and finally diving deep down, only to burst up astern to surf our wake or leap joyously from the sea as if to take off.

There is a feeling of complete freedom on a small boat atop a big ocean where there is only the sea and the sky. Is there anywhere better than the canopied foredeck of a craft on the Indian Ocean? Nobody wants to talk, it being such a great place to think.

We're overnighting at Eydhafushi where we begin our radio signal monitoring schedule. Rod is somewhat grumpy about the rotten shortwave reception just eight hours in a boat beyond Malé. At night a Baa citizens' meeting is convened at which about 40 people discuss Radio Maldives' programs and how they might be improved.

BEYOND EYDHAFUSHI, FRIDAY

Another top morning, but it's so early the water beneath our hull is jet black. We've set course for the isle of Funadu in Shaviyani atoll, and we're settling in for breakfast as Sinbad's skipper negotiates two tricky parallel reefs.

Then around 0630, as we enjoy cups of sweet, hot tea with Mahudu island looking very close, there's a sharp, glancing blow to the hull. And another bump, and within seconds of that, a long grinding crunch that shakes and then slightly tips Sinbad. Yes, it's friggin' Friday the thirteenth.

The skipper kills the engine, and we find that Sinbad is now floating in three or four feet of Indian Ocean surrounded by vertical shards of solid coral.

By 0700, a couple of the crew have completed an underwater inspection of the hull, which has been only slightly damaged and shows no sign of being holed, but both propellers are badly buckled. Sinbad is not for moving.

Fortunately, Mahudu is just a couple of hundred meters across the same channel we had so recently and unsuccessfully been navigating. In the middle of the channel, an engine dhoni drifts by, its two occupants netting bait fish. We yell for its assistance.

About an hour later, the dhoni has pulled us off the reef and towed us to a nearby populated island, Dharavandu. We had a look around the island, where it turned out my friend Ali Maniku's father was buried, during which we assisted some women pull ashore a dhoni (for which they were sharing the capital sum of four rupiah between the ten of them). We didn't seek our share.

By 1100, courtesy of a passing dhoni, Rod Thompson, Badrul, Hussain, and I are back at Eydhafushi telling the story of our adventure to anyone who’d listen. By the afternoon, it was arranged that Ali Baba would come from Malé to pick us up and continue our journey north but, having lost a day and a half, we probably won't reach the top of the country.

EYDHAFUSHI to UGOOFARU, SATURDAY

A five-hour journey in Ali Baba to the atoll chief's island in Raa Atoll, population about 500. My good friend Ali Maniku's brother, Adam, is building an engine workshop for marine diesels here. The day is overcast but not unpleasant. Rod and I continued our field strength testing. All the high frequencies are ineffective and have been since before Eydhafushi. During the day, there's a heavy overlay of static, and at night they're totally buried under adjacent stations. The MF (medium frequency) is better. Although below acceptable dB at this distance, it is relatively noise-free and listening is comfortable. This is from only 150 watts, so a daytime MF groundwave service is looking like a certain possibility.

I talk at length with Adam Maniku. He's convinced that atoll dwellers need to cluster close to population centers where fish canneries, schools, shops, hospitals, etc. will be located. He believes this is the only way to stop the urban drift to Malé and the best way to use the workforce effectively. At night, the people stage a concert (singing and dancing) which we record for broadcast. The young women perform a bandigoo pot dance and the men a boduberu, which they tell us wasn't very good but seemed fine to us. There's the total friendliness and hospitality we've come to expect. I'm bewildered at the lack of any kind of gardens.

UGOOFARU to FUNADU (SHAVIYANI), SUNDAY

Another placid sea underpins our four-hour journey, but there are signs the weather is changing. The MF signal, although attenuating, is much the best signal available here. Truth is, at this distance from Malé, the only useful signal is the morning MF. Funadu has 200 people and two radio sets. The people were moved here from Nomu atoll 10 years ago to join a group of 40 men forming an Islamic community. But the men never arrived. Nevertheless, they've done pretty well to get the population up to where it is. The fishing around here is bad, and they asked the government if they could return to their island of origin. The response was that they'd made their decision, so that was that.

Funadu is clearly a poor island—very few houses of coral stone, three fishing dhonis of reasonable size (one of which plies between here and Malé trading mainly firewood and bananas). The island is large and has loamy soil which makes it look agriculturally promising. But, as in the rest of the country, there is no great interest in island development—fishing and tourism drive national revenue, and they're the growth areas. We walked into the island's hinterland. The lagoon is long and narrow and looks just like a river. At the other end, there are signs of an old settlement wiped out by a smallpox epidemic 150 years ago. One gravestone we could decipher was 160 years old. The graveyard and the rubble of old buildings—the island's only tourism feature!

FUNADU to EYDHAFUSHI, MONDAY

There were showers overnight but, while there was a sea running more than we've been used to this trip, it was a long (eight hours) but comfortable day's travel. I spent a bad night with a heavy cold trying to ignite my asthma. When we arrived at Eydhafushi, it was alive with excitement. The Coral Star, a fish collection vessel of about 800 tons, was anchored in the channel surrounded by a bevy of the little white 30-tonners. Motorized dhonis were coming from everywhere, and deep into the night, to sell their catch. It was like a carnival.

Our radio forums are on air after a long struggle between me and the government to get them going. The authorities felt that giving the people the opportunity to express their views relatively freely, even excluding politics, was potentially dangerous to good order. I'd won the day, but the concept is hanging on by its fingernails.

I talk for an hour with the leader of the Eydhafushi radio forum to get an understanding of the problems as he saw them: (1) many programs lack relevance; (2) poor radio reception, which is what we're investigating on this trip; (3) personality issues as the leader is unpopular with the people here (he comes from an island 12 miles away). We can train to fix (1). We are working to fix (2). And the best way to fix (3) is beyond my insight. The Maldives is a small country, but it has a very complex and often volatile society.

The trip has been most useful. The huge issue of Radio Maldives' technical problems has been reinforced, and I'm sure Rod Thompson's mission report to UNESCO and the Australian government will lead to action. But my irritation has been stimulated by the neglect and disdain of the national government towards people who live outside Malé.

EYDHAFUSHI to MALÉ, TUESDAY

We leave Eydhafushi at 0615 on a fine morning but gradually catch up with a bank of bad weather that makes the transit to Malé a little uncomfortable. An hour out, we overtake a bathelli (twin master) which had left Ugoofaru on Saturday morning about the same time we did. It's laden with firewood and coconuts for the Malé market. Three days for a voyage of about 100 miles.

But who were we to scoff. Our skipper's navigation was off beam causing us to travel too far east of Malé. You can easily miss these low lying islands if you’re relying on observation not instruments. As we doubled back towards Malé we spotted some islands that were new to us and the wreck of an oil search vessel on a particularly nasty reef. We entered Malé atoll by the northernmost entrance, and a couple of hours later familiar islands started to pop up, and these low-lying islands do seem to pop up, the shimmering tops of palm trees first.

And so our trip to the (near) north concluded. Ali Baba, the replacement for our original reef finder, at 30 feet is a bit too small for the open sea. That said, it's a locally constructed boat and, unlike the Maldives’ government, exceptionally stable. Overall, though, this has been a useful trip. It's inspired in me irritation at the government of this country, which doesn't seem to much care about atoll people, and motivated me more than ever to give the Maldives an excellent broadcasting service both technically and in terms of good programs.

_________

FOOTNOTE

Later in 1978, the 10 year old government of Ibrahim Nasir was overthrown in a coup by Maumoom Abdul Gayoon, under whose 30 years in office the Maldives developed and flourished, with tourism bringing atoll’s people a role and wealth they had never previously known. In 1987, eight years after my stint in the Maldives, I was invited back for a fortnight to review progress on the project that had begun on my watch.

At Hulhule airport, I was greeted by Badurul Naseer and Hussain Mohamed wielding the page from my final report where I’d enumerated a dozen or so important ideas for action. When I scanned the page I discovered that the first five had been ticked off. Then in 2011, three decades after my initial mission, Mohamed Shahyb, Vice President of the Maldives Broadcasting Commission, honoured me, for providing “expertise and advice sought by the government of Maldives to launch a successful career of public service broadcasting in the country." Badurul Naseer was by then President of the Commission.