Asia: more than 119’000 people killed, thousands still missing, up to 5 million displaced.

Maldives: 75 confirmed death, 42 missing, 9’000 evacuees, 12’000 homeless people, numbers are still moving quickly and daily.

I published in October a post about our next holidays in Maldives. We decided with my wife to cancel them. It was a difficult decision for us, not financially speaking at all, but more a question of ethic vs. risks vs. helping people. Let me summarize our thoughts. As a reminder, we have a little boy who is 3 years old and we planned to visit Maldives at the beginning of February, in about 4 weeks.

Risks

This part is quite factual, although some people don’t want to face them.

– The real state of the resorts is not easy to find out. There is a kind of positive and reassuring propaganda (understandale in a way…) from the Maldives’ Ministry of Tourism, which is difficult to trust if you have also seen some images on TV.

– It will be difficult to resupply the islands for the coming weeks, which is already the case (tourism, inhabitants).

– The specialists are concerned about the long-term supply of fresh water (see this article).

– The substructure of the islands could be strongly damaged. This is not already apparent, but could be very dangerous for the stability of the buildings on the islands. A lot of water reserves are integrated in this island substructures and could be lost (contamination) (see this article too).

– “There is a chance that we could have at least as many dying from communicable diseases as we had dying from the tsunami” (see this article). I heard at the radio yesterday (a doctor specialized in disease epidemics) that the first effets should be first visible in about 4 to 6 weeks, specially because of the mosquitos which are transmitting a lot of diseases.

– It is very difficult to know how far this region will be confronted with afterschocks/earthquake replica. There were already a lot, and there will be a bunch in the coming weeks.

So, as a conclusion, a lot of uncertainties and under-estimation of the seriousness of the situation, to our point of view. And too risky for us and specially our little boy…

Ethic

“People were screaming and kids were screaming all over the place, screaming ‘help, help’. And after a few minutes you didn’t hear the kids any more.”

– I heard a lot, also in our travel agency, “Visit Maldives in effort to save tourism!”. This argument is driving me bad, really. Just have a look at the quote above.

– Priority is still set to tourists and not to the local inhabitants. Which is completely crazy and unacceptable. We do not want to participate to that… (see this article).

The reconstruction of Male’ appears to be more important than saving the lives of the thousands of destitute people scattered in more than 200 islands.

– How is it possible to lie down on the beach while people in the surrounding are fighting to re-build and re-construct?

Our little problem as tourists is definitely NOT important. And for some time, also not for this country! A lot of people lost one or more relatives. We are talking about people. Hey, please, a little respect. Let give them a little time to reconstruct and to be in mourning!!

Helping people

– A lot of possibilities to make some useful donations. Have a look at this Google page, which is handling the donation and relief websites.

– A good idea could be also to visit them, but first in some months!

Consequently, we are going to visit Saint Barthelemy. More to come in some days…