The office keeps the island register and writes the letters drawn from it: an address letter, a household letter, a certified copy of an entry, a letter of introduction. Fifteen rufiyaa, twenty five for a certified copy, nothing where the school or the health post has asked for it. Usually while you wait.
The office cannot issue or replace a national identity document or anything belonging to a national registry. It will tell you which office and what to take, and on this island that also means telling you which day's boat to be on.
The hall seats one hundred and twenty. Funerals and anything the mosque committee arranges pay nothing and have first call. A wedding or family occasion is one hundred and fifty rufiyaa a day. School and community use is free. The council lends one hundred and fifty chairs, six tables, two tents and a sound system, and the chairs go out most weekends.
The tractor and trailer do the waste round, the compost, the rubble loads, the harbour crates when the boat is short handed, and every funeral. It is booked at the office and it is the single most useful thing the council owns. When it is being repaired, which is about a fortnight a year, almost everything on this list stops, which is why the council has been putting money aside for a second one for three years and says so in the quarterly accounts.