Ruru the Creep: A tale of street harassment

NOTE: I am posting this again because I accidentally deleted the original one which I posted around March. Hope you guys don't mind. :)

A couple of weeks ago, I went on a school trip to GA. Atoll. Although I am Maldivian, I haven't been to a lot of places around Maldives, so naturally, I was very excited about the trip. We got to stay at local homes with strangers and that was probably my favourite thing about the whole arrangement. We spent most of our time in Villingili and we made a lot of fun, energetic and helpful friends there.

However, walking on the streets was a tad bit difficult in Villingili. On our first day we had a random creep (whom we became very familiar with later on) approach one of our friends and threaten to break into her house that night. One minute she was walking on the streets minding her own business and this 20 something year old pervert with nothing better to to do with his life approached her and scared the living sh*t out of her. We ran into him again a while later and he asked one of our male friends what her name was, and in frustration she blurted out "My name is none of your f*cking business" and he concluded that he would show her what "f*cking business" is. By this point it was just plain annoying so we started to walk away and the guy (Let's call him Ruru) being the creep he is, followed us. But one of our friends was so pissed off by this point, she turned around and karate kicked him right in his butt. I'm not kidding! This actually happened. So in shame, poor Ruru walked away. Little did we know that we would see a lot more of him in the coming days.

The next day we all went for a walk and guess who we ran into? That's right! Ruru! 
Driving around in his scooter wearing a pale pink shirt, he was the epitome of male perfection... not! Anyway, he followed us around again complaining about how butthurt he was... literally. His butt was still hurting from our friend's kick. Somehow, by this point he had learnt her name. So a couple of days passed with Ruru making cameo appearances in our lives time and time again. It did not take long for us to stalk him on Facebook and gather up every single detail of his existence. (You stalk us in real life. We stalk you on Facebook. THUG LIFE!)  God bless Facebook.

Our last day in the island was a bit eventful though because this time, it was Ruru ft. alcohol. Yes.On this particular day, Ruru was drunk out of his already non-existent wits. That afternoon, my friend Raya and I decided to go watch the local school's athletics event while everyone else was out fishing. We honestly had a great time there until just after sunset. That's when Ruru and his friends showed up. He was so drunk and unstable I could have confused him for a skinny, walking and talking piece of jelly. He came dangerously close to us and kept talking in this ridiculous tone which we still like to re-enact when we are bored. Anyway he told me (whom he so very lovingly referred to as Wafa WAHEED) that he had sent me a friend request on Facebook and that I should accept it. And then he began to compliment Raya and I on how "fakka" we were ("Fakka" is his favourite compliment, btw.) and how he is planning to come to Fuvahmulah ("Forkland" for Ruru and anyone else with enough #swag) soon and how he has his people here. And he concluded with a perfect cherry on top, "Where ever you go, I'll follow you."

I'm not going to lie. We were scared. He was drunk, persistent and he was the creepiest person we had ever met. Luckily for us, we had a lot of great friends and they led us to safety. He followed us again twice that night by the time we had to leave the island, we were dead sure that he was not on the list of things we would miss about Villingili. From what we gathered, he wasn't even completely evil. He was just a young person with too much free time and no clue on how to interact with other human beings.

Ruru's weapon of choice

On a more serious note, the whole experience with Ruru was downright traumatizing. He may have been a loser but he was a veryreal loser. This happens everyday in the Maldives and we accept it blindly as the norm around here. It is not okay to harass girls (or anyone for that matter) on the streets or anywhere. It is not okay to go up to a girl and make some lewd comment about how you are going to break into her house or follow her around. It was so common there that nobody even seemed to notice at first. We couldn't walk around without some pervert commenting on our appearance or following us around or doing something ridiculous to grab our attention. (Which reminds me, Ruru tried to throw a sea snake at us once.) It did not help that we walked in groups or were accompanied by male (because you know, men are 'stronger' than women and whatnot) friends. When are we going to start teaching our boys to act like decent human beings? What I know for sure is that we don't need more Rurus in our lives.