“My dad was invited by the Ministry of Health to help them establish the dental auxiliary school on Tom Redcam Drive,” said daughter, Premila Bartlett. “There was a dearth of dentists in Jamaica and the government figured that it would be more cost-effective if they trained dental auxiliary nurses in basic dentistry skills and deploy them nationwide.”
In addition to the professional opportunities the country offered, she said, Premila found a more nurturing school environment than what she had left in Sri Lanka.
Her mother, Lily – daughter of a medical doctor who worked in India – said it was easy for the family to adjust to life in Jamaica because both islands (Jamaica and Sri Lanka) had operated under the same British colonial system.
Right off, Mrs. Bartlett began teaching – her career began at St. Hughes High School and then later at Kingston College’s Melbourne Park. She laughs when she remembers her early introduction to KC.
“I was in a sari, was different from the other teachers, and people assumed that I didn’t know any English,” Mrs. Bartlett said.
Lily Bartlett Arulpragasam
How wrong that impression was! The Sri Lanka native first taught Religious Studies and Geography at St. Hughes, but left after a year when Premila was accepted there. She taught English and Speech training at Melbourne but continued to teach at St. Hughes Extension School.
For most of her time at Melbourne Park, Bartlett said, the late Carlton Bruce was principal.
“Brucie always believed that all the teachers were shirking,” she explained. “If he passed by and the boys were clustered around us, he would pry to see what was going on because he thought they were messing around. Later, he came to have a lot of regard for me.”
Mrs. Bartlett made her mark, and is most proud of, the work she did as a speech teacher. Her students competed and earned accolades and awards in National Festival competitions, prize giving ceremonies and other cultural contests.
“They had to do well or they would have been shot,” she joked.
One poem, “Sensemaya: A Chant For Killing a Snake,’ was a favorite. The poem, by Cuban Poet Laureate Nicolas Guillen (July 10, 1902 – July 16, 1989), was described by one scholar as “a sonorous, African-Cuban poem, designed to show that the musicality and sensuality of a poem can be translated.” Guillen’s poems often used onomatopoetic words that sought to imitate the sound of drums or the rhythm of son (a style of music that originated in Cuba).
Most performers merely chanted the poem, Mrs. Bartlett said, but when she did the research, she was told by Ugandan associate that Africans mesmerized animals – including snakes – using the drum and then killed them. So she had the boys perform the poem to the beat of a drum.
In the classroom, Mrs. Bartlett’s teaching style was a mixture of fire and ice.
“I breathed fire when the boys first joined my class,” Mrs. Bartlett said with a laugh. “But when they misbehaved, the most I did was stare at them hard and say, ‘You wretch!’
“Every morning I would say, ‘Good morning gentlemen…..’ and before they could get to my name, I would move on. Subsequently, I wondered what the boys called me, because I had recently changed my name from Bartlett to Arulpragasam after my divorce. So one morning, I said my customary, “Good morning gentlemen” but this time I waited until they completed their salutation. And in unison, without missing a beat, they said, ‘Good morning Mrs. Wretch!”’
Despite her reputation as a demanding teacher, Mrs. Bartlett is proud to have earned the respect of the boys under her care.
“I was against the boys being punished and did not believe in detention,” she said. “So I made them do transcription, spelling, punctuation and then they could go. The boys had a great sense of humor; they were able to share with me. They knew I had sympathy for them. They appreciated me as I appreciated them.”
She spoke warmly of what made her boys’ renditions special. One thing that stood out to Mrs. Bartlett was her speech students’ ability to perform well even if they had not paid attention or were disruptive during rehearsals.
“I remember we were rehearsing for a Prize Giving and the first formers were misbehaving,” she said. “Everything was in shambles before the opening. I left them, disowned them, yet they did so well the audience was impressed. Typical of Jamaicans, they stood on their heads but always rose to the occasion.”
Premila, mother of one and an employee with USAID-Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, said she was thrilled to leave Sri Lanka and thoroughly enjoyed growing up in Jamaica.
“If you’re asking me, I was delighted,” she said. “I hated my school there (in Sri Lanka) because I had to learn everything in my mother tongue, Tamil, which was like a foreign language for me; and I struggled. The reason I struggled was because I was born in the south and grew up speaking Sinhalese, and then spoke English because that was the language we spoke at home.
“No one around me spoke Tamil so it was alien to me. And yet, I was expected to do everything in Tamil when I went to school.”
Because of her difficulties with the language, Premila found herself at the bottom of her class and since the teachers only paid attention to those who were in the top 10 in the class, she was labeled a dunce, she said.
“When I came to Jamaica, I had a fabulous teacher, Mrs. Redicliffe, at Sts. Peter and Paul,” she recalled. “She made me believe in myself and also because I was learning in English, I was in the top 3 of my class within three months.”
Premila Bartlett said she, her mother and her brother “loved their time in Jamaica.” In fact, her brother Preethi is married a Jamaican. He started going out with his future wife when he was 16 and they have been together now for almost 40 years.
“My father (a doctor and dentist) also enjoyed himself professionally, especially teaching anatomy to medical students at Mona,” Premila said. “What we all loved about Jamaicans was their sense of humor and their way with words.”
However, her father and stepmother’s impression of Jamaica was clouded when they were held up at gunpoint in their home.
“My father felt that the only reason their lives were spared was because they saw his stethoscope and realized that he was a doctor,” Premila explained.
Although they lived in Jamaica for only seven years, the Bartletts said they have fond memories of their time there. And the most rewarding period professionally in her decades of teaching was the time spent at Kingston College, Mrs. Bartlett added.
“I enjoyed the boys tremendously, mainly because they were fun and had a thirst for knowledge and learning,” she said. “When I taught in the Bahamas afterwards, it was frustrating. I had nothing to teach the students because they “knew” everything.”
Writer’s note: This interview was conducted in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where Mrs. Bartlett was residing with her daughter, Premila Bartlett.
