Island Hopping
He remembers when he was first drafted into the army. There were 20 other schoolmates of whom he lost track when he was sectioned to the police. He did not like it. The police were in your face all the time. All go, go, go and no waiting around. Did that mean he was lazy? He did not think so but he was not as motivated as all these people.
Then he was sent off to an island station which meant that he missed his recruitment training with all his schoolmates. They went off and got trained while he sat around an island where there was nothing to do. He got up each morning at seven sometimes later, put on his uniform and went with his colleague to the atoll house where the police got their food. Sometimes they would blow it off and go just for lunch. He did not get on with his immediate superior who was into fishing, sucking up to the island biggies and not always in that order. The only good thing about that island was that the simple folk of that island was pretty friendly. He managed to make friends with so many of the island people that they felt almost like a second home. He would go and play football every evening and sometime he would go and have dinner or lunch at some of their houses.
The boss was managed to go to Male’ at the beginning of Ramadan for a week which left him and his colleague to manage the station. That was the best time they had. They would get up when they felt like it, wear their uniform if they felt like it and most of their time was spent in their friend’s homes watching TV and eating snacks and chit chatting. How four months passed by, he did not know but it was soon time to go back to Male’ where he was still a recruit which meant that he would be getting on the next recruit training batch.
After his training it took another six months or so before he had to go to an island. This time he knew more of what to expect and the island was different this time. His food was served in the station so he did not have to go anywhere. But the island folk who worked at the station was a cool bunch which meant that he soon made friends with all their families and he managed to become very good friends with their children. He would sometimes wake up early in the morning, go to their house and pick up the baby and the other two would also come with them as they went on a walk around the island. He loved those walks.
The people of this island were divided into two. There were those that loved the police and then there were those who hated them. He somehow managed to spend his time without really arousing any animosities, though he did have to arrest a couple of them for minor incidents.
The one thing he remembers from this island was that he managed to learn to ride a bicycle there. He had grown up without really trying to learn and now as a twenty year old still did not know how to ride a bike. His colleagues found out one day when he was told to go on surveillance to the other side of the island and to take the bike. The looks on their faces managed to shame him into finally taking the bike out later that night and riding it until he could.
Then there was the badminton court out back of the station. He spent many a time there playing with his colleagues and also some others like island officials and teachers who would come around to play there.
The third island he went to was in 2001 and this island managed finally to convince him that it was not a career that he wanted to be in. He got his first kiss on that island and his first “official” girlfriend as well as many other sexual experiences which would be best not gotten into here. Anyways that girlfriend became a real problem when she was revealed to be a tramp and only trying to get with him just because it would mean and exit from the life she was currently living.
She was not the first girl he visited there. There was one more whom he had gotten to know on the phone and finally his superior had found out and he called her and arranged a date. That date ended badly when some island folk came around and he had to get out of there quickly.
The worst thing that had ever happened to him happened in that island. He loved kids. He loved babies. There was always something amazing about them that made his heart light up. So when this woman was admitted into the hospital and kept saying that she had a miscarriage and that she had flushed everything down the toilet it became the biggest and worst case he had ever worked on. Her father came around the next day and he was crying. He had found the dead baby in a box in that woman’s room. When he and his colleagues arrived at that house it was true. The baby was in a box which was crawling in ants and he had to carry it outside to get rid of the ants. There were other family members crying and wailing their hearts out. He could not however give into his feeling and cry as he was police and attending a scene of crime.
That was not the last island he went to. About two years later he managed to secure a scholarship and finally left the police to go to the biggest island he had ever been to. The island of Australia.
