‘Ingreesi Mahattaya’ – Two years a village schoolmaster
By GEORGE BRAINE
Getting on the bus in Badulla town, I asked the driver if he could let me off at the Kendegolla Maha Vidyalaya. He gave me an odd look, but said “Naginna” (get in). The small bus went along the Passara Road, turned left, and began to climb a narrow road, winding past village houses and patches of tea. After half an hour, the driver stopped and pointed to a small white speck on the highest hill, miles from the road. “That’s the school”, he said. My heart sank.
What was I, barely out of my teens, doing in remote Uva hills, hundreds of miles from home? At Maharagama training college, I had met Fawzia, and we had fallen in love. She was from a traditional Malay family, and we did our best to keep the relationship a secret from her folks. When we finished our training, as English teachers, at the end of 1971, in order to be far away from our families, we asked for schools in Uva for our first appointments. Fawzia was sent to a school near Bandarawela and I got Kendegolla.
Getting off the bus, I began to trudge towards the white speck, passing a rustic kopi kade and ramshackle village houses. Idling men hung around, gawking at this strange apparition, me. The white speck disappeared as the footpath dipped or rounded a bend, and I had to ask for directions a couple of times. The walls of the houses were mud coloured, and certainly not the wattle and daub, or baked bricks, of the low country. I later learned that the walls were made of moda gadol (foolish bricks), so called because they were simply dried in the sun, not baked, and could dissolve during rainy weather. Some roofs were of rusty corrugated iron, but most were of straw.
Tired and somewhat disoriented, I reached the school a good 30-minutes later. This was January, the air was cool and damp, and a low cloud hung over the school. Students were milling around, because it was interval time. They had spotted me trudging up, word had spread, and a few teachers were also peering down at me.
Followed by a throng of students, I reached the principal’s office, where a short, balding, older man, and a taller one dressed in “national” costume, greeted me. When I introduced myself as the new English teacher, the tall man blurted “Me lamayinte mona ingreesida” (What English for these children!). But the other person was welcoming, saying he had been requesting an English teacher for years. He turned out to be the principal. (I’ll call him Mr. Senaratne).
After the preliminaries, I needed a place to stay and Mr. Senaratne suggested that Gunaratne, who taught economics, could help me. So I went along with the latter to check-out his boarding. We forded a rocky, shallow stream near the school, and walked single-file along a fast-flowing irrigation channel that skirted the hillside on our left, with terraced paddy fields on the right. I liked the well-built, tiled house where Gunaratne boarded, and the simple family that greeted me. I could share a room with Gunaratne, whose cheerful nature – full of chatter and jokes – I took a liking to.
Teachers and Students
The few hundred students ranged from Grade 1 to 12, divided into the primary and secondary sections. The younger students came from the vicinity, but some students in the secondary section attended school from the surrounding villages, Kendegolla being the only maha vidyalaya for a sprawling, mountainous area. I came to know students who walked four miles each way, on rough, winding, mountainous paths, to attend school, some leaving home, before dawn, without breakfast. None wore shoes. Every day, a couple of students, weak from hunger, would faint during school.
Recently, I dug into my old files and found a programme for Kendegolla’s first sports meet, which I organized in 1972. That programme listed the names of all the teachers of that time. The primary school teachers – Rajapakse, Gunatilleke, Piyadasa, Piyasena, Dissanayake, Seneviratne, Dingiriamma, Senadheera, Premalatha, Margaret, Piyadasa Peiris (some were husband and wife couples) – were from the village itself. Hayath Bee Bee was from some distance away, on the Passara Road, and walked uphill about two miles to school. All the secondary school teachers, except one, were from other areas. Most were recent graduates, and some travelled by bus, from Badulla or beyond. In addition to Gunaratne, my roommate, they were Mendis and his wife Malini, Piyadasa, Piyasoma, and Karunaratne. Later, three more graduates joined the school. Two, Nawalage and Jayasinghe, were ex-monks. Nawalage, who was from far-off Nivithigala, had requested a transfer to a far off area just before he left robes, to avoid embarrassment to his family. From their general demeanor, even the way they walked and talked, one could discern a former ascetic life. Behind their backs, they did not escape the somewhat derogatory heeraluwa label.
Susil was the school drunk. Boyish in appearance, but permanently disheveled, he turned up late to school, looking as if he had slept in a gutter. Sometimes he wore shirt and slacks, a soiled national dress at other times. The principal advised him often, but Susil, on a permanent hangover, only grinned sheepishly, not uttering a word.
One clear difference between the local and other teachers was their dress. All the local men wore the so called national dress, a long white shirt and sarong. Teachers from elsewhere, except for Mendis, wore shirts and pants.
For a rural school in a “difficult” area, without proper roads or basic facilities, to have that many graduate teachers was a rare gift. These graduates were mainly young, dedicated teachers, and they soon produced results, sending a couple of students to university. I remember the students’ names: Premawathie and Podi Appuhamy, who both entered Kelaniya University.
Ironically, despite the qualified and competent teachers at Kendegolla, the local teachers sent their children to schools in Badulla town. These children, wearing neat school uniforms, were in sharp contrast to our scrawny, shabbily dressed students.
During my times, the school consisted of four long, single storied, bare-bones buildings, each housing four or five classes. The classes were not separated, even by a wall. The roofs were tile, and the sides were open, with half-walls running, lengthwise, on each side. Dust blew in, covering the floor and the students’ desks and chairs. No pipe borne water or electricity, of course. A luxuriant bougainvillea bush, near the principal’s office, added the only colour to the school.
Kendegolla was at a high elevation. Once in a while, the entire school would be covered by a passing cloud, darkening the area and lowering the temperature. Students, shivering in the cold, stepped out of the classroom, looking for any patches of sunshine they could find. Teaching was suspended, sometimes for hours, till the cloud drifted away.
Being the only Ingreesi mahattaya, I taught English, from grades 6 to 10, every day, and an occasional lesson for the handful of students in grades 11 and 12. The government distributed free textbooks to all the students, but most had only one “exercise” (writing) book for all their subjects. Each class had 30+ students, and motivating them was the main problem. Without visual or other teaching aids, I relied mainly on reading and recitation, using the good old “chalk and talk” method. I don’t think those students learned much English from me.
Life in the village
School finished at 1.30 in the afternoon, and Gunaratne and I walked along the irrigation channel back to our boarding. Basins of water, with soap, had been laid out for us, and we later sat down for lunch. The local Sinhala haal rice, a couple of vegetables, and dhal. Fish or meat was never served, but we occasionally had an egg, and fried karawala, salted and dried fish. This was a devout Buddhist home. The simple meals were to my liking, although I missed curries cooked with coconut. At Kendegolla, due to the high elevation, not a coconut palm was in sight, and coconuts were a luxury, only available in Badulla town.
The family – husband, wife, two sons and two daughters – had their evening meal after Gunaratne and I had finished, and we usually chatted with the father while he chewed beetle. The two sons sat with us, but were respectful of the father, and barely uttered an opinion. Later, in our room, we listened to the radio, the Sinhala service of Radio Ceylon. During the previous year, 1971, the first JVP insurrection had occurred, and a public inquiry was broadcast on the radio. My former civics teacher in secondary school, Mr. Shanmugam, had joined the police and become an SP. I distinctly remember him being cross examined at the inquiry. Before 9pm, we turned off the kerosene lamp and went to sleep.
Our landlord was comparatively well off, being a carpenter. He also owned a small plot of paddy. The village was surrounded by a large tea plantation, Telbedde Estate, but all the workers there were Tamils residing on the estate. Most villagers scratched a living from subsistence farming, or a little patch of sweet potatoes, a grove of manioc, and various vegetables. A staple food was kollu (horse gram), especially among those who did not own paddy fields. One had to be very poor to be eating it, because kollu was usually fed to horses, and I am now reminded of how Samuel Johnson defined oats: “A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”
Once, in response to a survey that the Education Department conducted, a large number of families, in the area, indicated an income of Rs. 100/ – not monthly, but annually. That is, about Rs. 10/ per month. In today’s terms, that would be less than Rs. 1000/ for a family, for an entire month. How people managed to feed themselves, leaving cash for clothes and other essentials aside, was a mystery. The “plight of the Kandyan peasantry” is no cliché.
Except for the teachers, no student or villager may have seen the sea, or Colombo, or even Kandy. None may have tasted sea food. The height of sophistication was Badulla town, which glittered at night with electric lights. The town even had water on tap! The cinemas, with a galaxy of popular Sinhala, Tamil, and Hindi films, drew estate workers and villagers from all around.
The village had a small temple, at the bottom of a hill, surrounded by paddy fields. The easy going young monk formed a friendship with me. He was curious about Christianity, and I explained as best as I could, avoiding tricky topics such as the Holy Trinity. On poya days, all the students and the teachers, dressed in white, observed sil at the temple, sitting on the ground of the spotlessly clean premises, in the shade of a bo tree and a small stupa. I recall the peaceful ambience, and the monk’s simple and appealing sermons.
A few afternoons a week, Gunaratne and I collected our soiled clothes in a bundle, and, a towel draped around our necks, walked to the stream to wash our clothes and to bathe. Usually, a few older male students joined us. We first walked downstream and washed our clothes, soaping and pounding them on the rocks. Then, we clambered upstream, sat in a rocky pool, and bathed leisurely, listening to Gunaratne’s endless jokes, always ending with “Hinawela marenewa” (die laughing).
On some evenings, when we were bored, he and I strolled to the edge of a hill, from where we could gaze at Badulla town, down in the valley to our right, and the majestic Namunukula mountain range across the valley to our left. Sometimes, a couple of students came along. As twilight descended, we could see the electric lights twinkling in Badulla. We talked aimlessly, sharing the news and gossip, but were wistful, longing for what we did not have at Kandegolla.
(To be continued)