Let us praise the museum worker

A true story about money, magic and the Maldives.

I walked the yellow taped line of the Africa section in a museum in downtown Dallas. The cowrie shell-rimmed masks sent twinges of something up and down my spine – a memory? a question? a voice?

For a thousand years cowries – named for secrets – were harvested in the Maldives. Fishers interrupted their quiet, monogamous lives on the ocean floor. Women wa…