The main ingredient in Maldivian food is fish. From grilled tuna and redfish to mackerel and shark, there is a wide choice. A special fish soup is also one of the island’s original dishes. This also includes a special dried fish that is very popular with the local population. There are not refrigerators everywhere and dry fish can be stored for a longer period of time without refrigeration.
Since the Maldives are in the Indian Ocean and off the Indian coast, you can also find Indian influences. These include curries, which are spicy sauces with meat or fish. Maldivian flatbread, called roshi, is also a traditional dish. Eggs, bananas, papayas and chicken are also more common. Everything else has to be introduced.
The milk from coconut milk is also often served as a drink, because the coconut palm grows here on most of the islands. The flesh of the coconut is also processed in the kitchen. However, you can eat EVERYTHING on the hotel islands. There is now also pork, which is not really on the table in a Muslim country.
Maldives with many children
The Maldives are a country with many children. Almost half of the entire population is under 15 years of age. Family and family life are very important in the Maldives. While in the past there were almost only large families and the grandparents lived together with children and grandchildren, today you will also find the small family that we perceive as normal, i.e. parents and several children. But several generations still live together.
Traditional family picture?
The father is the head of the family. Nevertheless, women can keep their family names and girls can inherit just like boys. Theoretically, Maldivian men are legally allowed to marry several women, but in practice such “multiple marriages” are now less common in the Maldives. The husband also has to be able to provide for the family and that is not so easy with several women with several children.
But divorce is very easy for men. You just have to cast off a woman and the marriage is almost divorced. There are very high divorce rates in the Maldives. For women, divorce is much more difficult to enforce. But now more women are divorcing their husbands. Many residents of the Maldives are often married, more often than ours.
Everyone knows each other on the islands!
The villages on the islands are small, everyone knows everyone here. This also means that people stick together, and families are often linked again through marriage. On every island there is a “boss” who is responsible for keeping things tidy.
Work by luxury hotels
The Maldivians are among the poorest countries in the world, as for many people there is no job or source of income outside of fishing or the little agriculture. But many families send their young people to work in the hotels on the hotel islands. With the wages they can contribute to the family income.
Family celebrations
The Islamic holidays are also observed in the Maldives, a country located in Asia according to calculatorinc. But there are other festivals that people like to celebrate. One of the festivals is the naming day, which is usually a festival within a village. Seven days after the birth of a child, parents, relatives, friends, and neighbors gather to give the baby a name. Afterwards there is a feast and the baptism is celebrated.
Since it is an Islamic country, there is also a circumcision festival. Boys between the ages of six and eight are circumcised. Here, too, there is an extensive celebration over several days.
