Testimonials
Country: Austrailia. Project: Teaching Assitant
I first became interested in visiting the Maldives from hearing stories from my Mum, who used to live and work there. I looked around and decided the best way to experience the real Maldives would be to do volunteer work and stay on a local island, which is how I found Volunteer Maldives. After months of dreaming and wishing, I found myself touching down in Male on a wonderfully hot day and was greeted by Junan, the airport rep, who took me to my Male accommodation and then showed me around Male for 2 days which was so much fun and I really appreciated having him to show me around. Then it was off to my island, wow. I could never have expected what it was like, the life, the people, the nature, the classes. I was teaching English in a holiday program with a bit of art and craft mixed in, so I had my own classes, which were really scary at the start but a huge learning experience for me. It was lovely to plan my own lessons, and was so rewarding to see how the kids warmed up to me and improved in their speaking skills. And also seeing their faces as they proudly left the classroom with whatever craft piece they’d made during the class was great.
I also ran an adult’s class, which was a fun thing to do every night and a great way to meet some more people on the island, as well as learning about the culture of the Maldives . A few women took that class and we would then go for walks around the island afterwards.
But that only accounts for a few hours of every day. I spent a lot of time reading – my time in the Maldives was my first free time in 4 months. I went night fishing a few times, visited an uninhabited island for an afternoon, went to another island for a day, went to a 4 day circumcision party where we had food fights, I learnt to cook a traditional breakfast – roshi mashuni, I cooked some traditional Aussie damper for my family, went snorkelling and swimming almost every day, played netball with the girls, took long walks around the island with my little host brothers and sister, and I took lots and lots of photos of beautiful sunsets and people.
I was really sad to have to leave so soon and I already promised everyone I would come back, so they weren’t allowed to forget me, the only question is how soon that will be."
Eva Affolton