Swimming students double in successful second week in the Maldives

COUNTRY: Maldives
PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Teaching & Sports Coaching
WRITTEN BY: Caitlyn Swinney

Our second week at Hithadoo has been very busy but incredible! The sun has been shining allowing for swimming lessons every day this week and their success has meant the international volunteers have almost doubled the number of children participating. Because of this we've even had to split the group into 2 and start the lessons earlier, at 4.30pm.

All the children are progressing extremely well, and we volunteers will probably begin teaching them proper freestyle next week! This week has also meant the beginning of the nursing paramedic sessions, and although we've only had 2 so far the nurses seem to enjoy them and hopefully have been learning from us! At the end of our 2nd paramedic session the nurses gave us a farewell party because some of the head nurses are going on leave and won't be able to say goodbye when the time comes.

It was such a nice party, the directors, doctors and nurses all came and they even gave all the people volunteering chocolate cake and presents! The health side of hospital this week has also been incredibly interesting; Anne and I saw the delivery of a beautiful baby girl, Sarah witnessed various circumcisions and a C section and we helped out in emergency after casualties from a road traffic accident came in.

We also conducted our first week of first aid classes and they seemed to be quite successful despite losing a few participants along the way. Maybe it was due to my terrible singing skills of Stayin' Alive in CPR... In addition to teaching the locals how to save lives, we saved the life of a local animal, a fruit bat, which had fallen onto the sidewalk and couldn't get back up!

All of the volunteers are looking forward to this weekend, as last weekend was amazing. Shangri-la was the most beautiful place and our lunch was delicious, we didn't want to leave!! Snorkelling last Friday was so much fun although we didn't see a turtle which disappointed Mark. However, we may see one on our adventures this weekend which begin with a BBQ and snorkelling trip this afternoon. We've had some food this week that resembles Aussie food, such as pizza, pasta, toasted sandwiches and hot chips! However it wouldn't be right if these meals didn't contain fish, or more specifically tuna, and so we ate our first tuna pizza.