A Morley Safer Classic: It's a Long Way to Furudu | 60 Minutes Archive
In a Nutshell
A German tourist named Yokim Bloom was banished for life to the remote Maldivian island of Furu after murdering his girlfriend in Male. Instead of prison, he found a peaceful existence, converted to Islam, married a local woman, and now lives as an islander with no desire to return. The story highlights the Maldives' unusual justice system of banishment over incarceration and its remote, isolated way of life amid growing tourism interest.
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The 60 Minutes broadcast opens by noting that from time to time oddball stories turn up in the program. The story is titled "It's a Long Way to Furu" and began when the team was in Singapore a couple of months earlier. They decided to visit a place no one they knew had ever been to, the Republic of Maldives in the Indian Ocean.
The Maldives consist of a succession of atolls in the Indian Ocean, extremely remote and beautiful beyond description. They lie well south of India and a bit to the left. The Maldives' best known contribution to the world is the word "atoll." There are a thousand islands, but only 200 of them are inhabited. In the world power struggle, they are non-aligned. There are 130,000 Maldivians scattered across 500 miles of ocean. They speak their own language and a bit of English.
The country has the highest divorce rate in the world, though no one quite knows why. Both men and women are decent to outsiders. For a long time, the only way to contact the Maldives' only diplomat, its UN ambassador, was to leave a message at a stamp shop on 57th Street in New York. Most of the world recognizes the Maldives, but only India, Pakistan, and Libya maintain embassies in the capital city of Male. The United States has an honorary consul, a Maldivian named Rashida Dei, who said she applied for the job. The great seal of the United States now resides at Mandu Derugi on the main Magu, the main street of Male.
Normally when 60 Minutes decides to do a country, they try to interview the top people. They called on President Nasir, but after some waiting it became evident that Mr. Nasir had no intention of seeing them. No one in Male had ever heard of CBS or 60 Minutes. The team decided to press on anyway. Male grows more like Washington every day with a ministry of this and that and the other thing. Ministers are extremely elusive.
The president designate of the Maldives was the minister of transport, Mr. Gaume. When President Nasir decided to step down, he called for a national referendum to name a successor. The only name allowed on the ballot was Mr. Gaume. The team waited at the ministry reading Moonlight, Male's only English paper.
A young man informed them the minister would not be in until the next morning at 8:00. The people seem friendly, nature's own gentlemen. Life in Male is calm and sedate yet colorful. The market is alive with people, the people are alive with fish, and the fish are alive with flies. From the university with the prayer tower in the center of its campus, Oral Roberts' television program could be heard.
Oral Roberts appears on Radio Maldives because President Nasir sells time on the station to American evangelists who want their message beamed to southern India. Maldivians seem oblivious to it. The islands are 100% Muslim. They underwent a mass conversion to Islam 800 years ago when a shipwrecked Moroccan saint made the king of the Maldives see the light.
The Maldivians are the most gentle of people. Physical violence is practically unheard of. One Maldivian rarely hurts another. Last year, a German traveler named Bloom stabbed and killed his girlfriend in a fit of jealousy. Because crime was so rare, there was no death sentence and no prison. President Nasir uses banishment as punishment for his political enemies. The German had been banished for life to the distant island of Furu.
The team spent a day on the waterfront in Male trying to hitch a ride to Furu. They found they did not need permission to go to the banishment island. The way things seem to work in the Maldives is "don't ask and ye shall receive." They met a man who said he would be there at 6:00 with a boat. They boarded the good ship Dan Dealu, a 50-year-old vessel that had spent most of its life running dried fish to Ceylon. The trip was supposed to take six hours but took nearly three days.
The captain is cautious because the charts indicate the island is practically surrounded by a barrier reef. As light is failing, a line of palms and a ribbon of surf appears. The captain warns they must be very careful in the shallow waters. The team wonders if the people will be friendly, whether Bloom speaks English, and if he is still there.
The people could not be more friendly. A figure appears and is identified as Mr. Bloom. He speaks English but finds it not easy after one and a half years on the island. He now speaks only the Maldivian way. Bloom says there is a great difference between life in America or Germany and here, but he feels much better on this island than in Germany before. If he had been in Germany, he would be in prison, but he prefers banishment here to being a free man in Germany.
Bloom does nothing all day. He has become in every way an islander. He has taken their religion and has taken a bride. Banishment for him has meant a certain kind of paradise. He counts himself a very lucky man. When he arrived, the people were friendly. He did not know he was a banished man because on an island you are free, unlike in prison where you always have to stay in the jail. He says he could never return to the world. If pardoned, he would visit his family then come back to Furu.
He is teaching the islanders chess. They taught him their language and how to survive in paradise, including how to handle a locally made doni and the tricks of fishing off the reef. He does not always know what day or month it is. He thinks it is the first of October on a Sunday, but it is actually the sixth or seventh of October.
Poor 23-year-old Yokim Bloom lost a future in a Frankfurt factory after a fit of temper in Male. Now he strolls the perfect beach. Tourists are coming, though not to disturb Bloom on Furu. Back on the main islands, only a handful of tourists are there now, but more are on the way, perhaps 40,000 next year, mainly from Europe. They will suffer or enjoy a kind of banishment. There are no hotels on Male, so they are sent to nearby islands to hotels owned by President Nasir or President Gaume or their pals. Everyone seems content with that arrangement.
The Russians want an abandoned British air base on the even more remote atoll of Gan at the very tip of the archipelago. They would like to watch over an American base on Diego Garcia. The Maldivians turned down the Russian offer of $1 million a year, the biggest offer anybody has ever made for anything in these islands, in order to stay out of other people's quarrels.
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