Give Something To Get Something!

“A Sprat to Catch a Mackerel” is a famous English idiom which is very much self explanatory to people like us in the Maldives, who have been using small bait to catch a larger fish. We have often used a tiny fish to catch a big fish, a big fish to catch a large one and a large bait to hopefully get a HUGE one!

The mackerel above is resting on a small pile of rehi or Silver Sprat I bought to be baked in the oven or to be deep fried ( this is the hazardous method to our health, but the most delicious, Oh! God, why can’t the doctors and our taste buds ever EVAH agree!) Since time immemorial our forefathers have used a variety of baitfish to catch the many varieties of Tuna in our waters.  By far the Silver Sprat above is the favourite. For some reason they are abundant in our South in the North East Monsoon and found in our Eastern atolls in the South West Monsoon.

The Blue Sprat or hondeli is also in our Bait National Team, while Fusiliers or muguran also help in achieving the goals with the help of Anchovies or miyaren. The pretty but hardy Blue Damselfish that  often help us out in distress are the nilamehi.  In the end it all boils to one thing; soup? No! here it all boils to the fact that you have to sacrifice something to get something else. We all hope that the bait be smaller and the catch, much larger!

Maldives being a tiny country with minimal resources to educate our students here at home, had to send our sons and daughters abroad in the hope of a better future for them and for the country as well. Mothers had to bear unimaginable emotional burdens to see their daughters and sons leave for countries they have hardly heard of! Students themselves had to learn a foreign language before they can join the mainstream!

Craftsmen had to be apprentices to skilled workers and toil for long hours before they can hope to acquire the skills of their masters. Sportsmen have worked for ten to fifteen years just to get qualified for an Olympic team, and that is just the lucky One Percent or a fraction of that one percent! There is no method so far in which we can just learn a trade with the touch of a magic wand. Practice, practice and more practice and huge sacrifices are the key, and to see a world champion other factors have to fall in line too!

Thank You!