2k Journal: Our 100th Story

Well, last week’s story about the kaalhu was actually our one hundredth. We started off sixteen months ago hoping just to add slightly more informative captions to Naj’s pics, and here we are.

Since then we’ve uncovered some new stuff and played around with some old stuff, but in the main we’ve tried to look at Maldivian culture, history, and society through a new lens.

As our project has evolved, we realise that our ultimate aim is really just to encourage people to see the beautiful, the strange, and above all, the fascinating that’s all around them.

We continue to be amazed by the way in which ideas, events and personalities interact and create a living & breathing culture here in the middle of the Indian Ocean that has something for everyone.

If we had to pick out some of our highlights, we’d say that the Koattey and Yaahunbaraas stories gave us a chance to really dig into rich seams of local history, and profiling individuals such as Ibrahim Didi and Thutthu Beyya was a great privilege. Re-discovering places long forgotten such as Gaafu Alif’s old leper colony left us pondering what else lies out there in the atolls, while Fuvahmulah’s female cricketers are a great example of new social histories being created on the islands.

If we can shed new light, spread a little knowledge, or just snap pictures of the Maldives at its most interesting, we’ll be happy with our work. We hope you are too, so please take a look back through our century of stories.

We’re looking forward to a hundred more.