The last boat before Ramadan is full a fortnight in advance. If you ask us in that last week, the honest answer will be no.
Every year, in the week before Ramadan, somebody asks for a month of supplies for a large family and every year we have to say no. It is the least popular thing this shop does and it is not going to change, so it is worth explaining.
The constraint is not money or shelf space. It is boat space, and boat space before Ramadan is spoken for a fortnight ahead by every shop and half the households in this atoll. Our allocation on those runs is booked before the month starts, and what is on it is decided by what has already been asked for.
So the order of events is this. In the month before Ramadan, we ask the school, the guesthouses and the bigger family groups what they will need. Those quantities go on the early boats. Then we add the island's ordinary pattern, which we know well enough by now: dates, flour, oil, sugar, milk powder, tinned fish, juice and considerably more cooking gas than anybody plans for.
What is left over after that is what a late order can draw on, and in the last week it is usually not very much.
The practical advice is dull and it works. Place the big order in the month before. Use this site so it is written down with a reference rather than remembered from a conversation at a busy counter. Split it over two boats if it is large, which also spreads the payment.
And tell us about anything unusual. If your family drinks a particular thing or your mother uses a particular flour, we cannot bring it on a boat we have already loaded.
