We Need To Build Bridges With Each Other

I've already posted "the case of my missed flight." With tmi staff not supportive and as we were too early for a "Riyaa Cafe" breakfast at 6.40 am on 5th decemebr 2005, I decided to do the next best thing. Read a book. I picked up a tma magazine "niyaama' no: 4. One sentence instantly caught my attention.

"Mohamed Thakurufanu The Great liberated Maldives in the latter part of the 16th Century."

I must confess I do not know enough about Maldivian history to make a crtical assessment of this liberation. But when I look at the social injustices that are prevailing in our society now, another more startling question comes to my mind.

"If infact we were liberated in the 16th century, how did we manage to get ourselves enslaved again." You can debate that this is a subjective opinion, each person entitled to his as I am to mine. For all I know, when I arrived Daalu Meedhoo an island with 1200 hard-working self confident individuals, there wasn't a single cyber cafe from where I could post this piece earlier.
On 5th december2005, evening I had gone in a launch to Faaf Nilandhoo, the capital island of that atoll, with 1600 inhabitants. Although there was one small cyber cafe, it was not opened even on 6.12.05 morning as not many people ever used it. The lingering question in my mind was, " when we came this far to nearly a developed country in Male', how and why did we leave the islands so far behind. This piece will run too long if I were dwell on the various social issues that are horribly wrong in these islands.

In order to maintain the social fabric of a unified people we need to learn to reach out to each other. We need restore trust between individuals and community leaders. We need to unlearn some of the corrupt practises that have crept into our society, which superficially give us a pseudo-western lifestyle while conveniently calling ourselves a 100 percent muslim nation.