Four Seasons Beach Villa with Pool

Mohamed Waheed, a smiling, swarthy man in his 60s, sits with a cup of coffee and begins to reveal how he got into the diving business. He hails from Haa Alif Haorafushi, and came to Male’ after completing his schooling on the island. “In those days we were taught in Dhivehi, we weren’t taught English,” he recalls. “You basically had to memorise lessons and recite them to your teacher.” He was fifteen when he came to Male’, and his arrival happened to coincide with Vihamanaafushi’s (now Kurumba) recruitment drive. There, he initially worked as a room boy. “The salary of a room boy at the time was 60 Rufiyaa,” Waheed says. “But then I caught the eye of one of the two owners of the resort, Kerafaa Ahmed Naseem, who told me to transfer to the engine room where I could get a considerable raise, to 160 Rufiyaa a month. That was how much a government secretary earned.”