Young
people looked upon Khelele Square, just outside the Cable and Wireless office
as an ideal place to climb the acacia trees and to have fun that little
children enjoy. However, their fun was
more often than not rudely interrupted by the Manager(s) of Cable and Wireless
who were known to call in the Police to disperse the kids. Sometimes the police were over enthusiastic
and arrested the kids so as to drive in the point that Khelele Square was out
of bounds for kids.
I
was one of the slaves in Mr. Bartlett’s galley of slaves at Cable and Wireless.
Mr. Bartlett was the Manager of the Company and was also a member of the
amateur dramatic society. He should have
been a comedian. Unfortunately in real life, he was given to dramatics.
During
our six-hour duty, radio operators were required to work with great accuracy or
else they might easily fall victim to any one of the many mistakes that can
sometimes occur, and they were bound to occur, in the telegraph world. It must also be understood that speed was
essential in forwarding and delivering messages and this in itself was fertile
ground for mistakes to occur.
Zanzibar
was an important center in the telegraph world at the time.
Thousands of messages passed through the
hands of the loyal and diligent radio operators during a six hour span and
these messages usually received in perforated language on tapes spewed out by
machines which we were trained to transcribe into English, were to be
distributed to many parts of the world.
Operators
generally worked with great care, but sometimes mistakes did occur and the
Supervisor was relegated the duty of tracing which operator was the
offender. Once this was established, the
“offending” operator’s name was recorded in a “Discrepancy Book.” Depending on the perceived gravity of the
mistake, the Manager would pass judgement by assigning the offender with
several hours of extra duty. This really
meant that it was a cut in wages. It was
one of many colonial prescriptions to treat the colonized like little children.
I
was always mystified that the Manager would install such a punitive system by
imposing this form of punishment on his Staff.
During my eleven years of loyal service, I often spoke to my colleagues
about the unfairness of maintaining a discrepancy book and the resultant
punishment that was meted out to very loyal and hard working operators. Everyone
I spoke to agreed that we were being treated like little children. The general consensus was that the book should
be thrown out and that the operators should be treated like adults and more so
like human beings. However, none of the operators were prepared to bell the
cat. This was understandable because the
operators depended very much on their wages to nurture their families and were
therefore not prepared to rock the boat for fear of being sacked.
I
tolerated this nonsense that only colonials could devise for eleven years and
in all these years I probably entered the discrepancy book five times. Each time that my name was inscribed in this
horrible instrument of torture, I could feel my temper rise but I kept telling
myself that what could not be cured had to be endured. Little did I realize that my threshold of
tolerance for this dehumanizing treatment was reaching its optimum levels and
that something had to give.
One
morning, however, in my eleventh year of service, as soon as I entered the
office, the Supervisor informed me that I had made it into the discrepancy
book. I told him that I would refuse to
comply with any extra duty that the Manager would impose on me. True to form, the Supervisor passed on the
message to the Manager who in turn ordered that I be sent to his office
immediately to be disciplined.
On
entering his office, he did not greet me, and neither did I greet him. He did not offer me a seat but kept me
standing as though I was an inmate from His Highness’ prison. In order to show
my disdain for this kind of treatment, I pulled up a chair and sat down. The expression on his face clearly revealed
that he did not appreciate what I did. In a restrained tone but in more decibels
than were necessary he opened this tirade.
“What
is this that I hear? You told the supervisor that you were not going to do the
extra duty that I will assign for misrouting a message intended for London to
New York” stated the boss in a voice that matched that of a Hitler. What was missing was the moustache.
“The
supervisor was right,” I responded in a tone that matched his.
“You
do realize that this is gross insubordination and I am going to have to report
you to head office for appropriate action,” stressed the boss.
“I
really don’t care what you call it,” I interjected, “but I am tired of being
treated like a thing rather than a human being. How about all the good work
that the operators put in? Aren’t they
entitled to make even one mistake given that they have to work with such speed?
We all try to put in an honest day’s work only to be penalized when something
goes wrong? If you can show me any
evidence that Head Office docks your wages for making a mistake in the administration
of this place, I am quite prepared to accept the system that I am made to
answer to today.”
Mr.
Bartlett dragged his chair back as though he was on the stage to demonstrate
his anger; he stood up, visibly changing colour like a startled chameleon and
shouted at me saying:
“This
is gross insubordination, and I don’t think that I have to take any more of
this.” he hammered home.
“I
am going to make things much easier for you, Sir, and the Head Office. You can take your job and stick it.”
I
stamped out of his office, mounted my Lambretta scooter, and off I went home
never to return to Cable & Wireless.
I
felt a calm come over me when I got home. It is the kind of calm that descends
on one who is convinced that he has done the right thing. I was aware that Mr. Bartlett perhaps did me
the biggest favour of my life. This was the single most important incident that
made such a significant change in my life.
A week later I was on my way to University
overseas and my life was never the same anymore.
I
am convinced that the Lord works in strange ways even if it is through upstarts
such as Mr. Bartlett and his cohorts.
