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Memoir of a First-Generation Immigrant
by Migel Jayasinghe (Sri Lanka/UK/Spain)
Colombo, 1940s
I was born a decade before the end of World War II, at the height of the British Empire, in a village in colonial Ceylon. My parents were both ’vernacular’ teachers employed by the state. Vernacular was the word used to distinguish native languages from the imperial language English, just as the Romans distinguished Latin from all other languages used by subjects within their empire. My three siblings and I spoke only Singhalese (my native tongue) at home. I was the eldest, and as such carried the burden of setting an example to the others, which made me the recipient of some harsh physical disciplining, especially from our mother. She was the dominant partner in the marriage, having risen to a headship much earlier than my father.
At the age of seven, I was required to walk seven miles to the nearest English school attached to a Catholic seminary. Since my parents were transferred from one village school to another, miles apart, every four or five years, I was soon placed in a boarding school in the hill capital Kandy. Between the ages of 10 and 12, I attended another school, this time at Kalutara, a seaside resort. At the age of 12, the year we received independence from the ‘mother country', Britain (1948), I managed to pass the entrance exam to a prestigious public school in the capital Colombo.
By this time, I had acquired a good grasp of the English language and had become fond of reading whatever books I could lay my hands on. The school library was well stocked with literary works, including the English classics, and although we rarely listened to the radio, the library shelves were stacked with British weeklies like The Listener. A local daily newspaper, The Ceylon Daily News, reproduced the British Daily Telegraph’s cryptic crossword, which I invariably struggled to complete.
By the time I reached the sixth form, reading Darwin, Freud and Marx gave me license to see myself as a ’free thinker'. When the principal tried to persuade me to undertake a Buddhist religious observance (Sil), I flatly refused, an action I later realized had cost my place at the one and only university in the country at the time. This was in spite of my winning the class prize for English every year. I regularly contributed short stories and articles to the annual college magazine. Quite often the local Daily News also published my sketches and stories in a weekly page set apart for children’s contributions.
Being a weakling physically meant that I had not made any mark on sports or athletic activities at the college. With only a few GCE O’ Levels to my name, the best paid and most glamorous job one could get was as a Sub-inspector of Police. These positions were much sought after and required applicants to face very stiff competition. It took me over three years to build myself up physically and acquire swimming certificates, as well as confidence, to enable me to enter the Police Training School as one of 27 trainee sub-inspectors. In the meantime, I worked as a clerk at the Auditor General’s Office in Colombo 7. I was almost 22 when I joined the police. It took so long because of the background checks into my extended family of grandparents, aunts and uncles scattered around the island. I surprised myself as one of the best shots in the Police Training School and beat the trainee Assistant Superintendents (all graduates) at regular tests in law. I was also leader of the debating team. I believed I had more than made up for my lack of sporting and athletic achievements.
As a Probationary Sub-inspector, I was posted at a provincial police headquarters. I soon became an Assistant Officer-in-Charge (OIC) and was sent as Acting OIC to smaller stations in the provinces when other officers went on leave or were training for higher positions. At one of these remote stations, I took full control of a murder investigation, apprehended the absconding murderer and later (much later) proved my case in the Supreme Court, entirely based on circumstantial evidence. I was highly commended by the judge. However, when I charged a powerful individual with possession of a vast quantity of cannabis, this proved to be my undoing. I was immediately transferred to the Colombo Headquarters for a desk job in Traffic and Information. I did not realize that my new superior (Superintendent) was under suspicion for corrupt practices and had been placed there, away from direct contact with the public, as a kind of punishment. According to subordinate staff, he had expected a backhander from me before he would confirm me in my post at the end of the probationary period of three years. He delayed my confirmation by six months. I confronted him, and thoroughly disgruntled, handed him my resignation.
The bureaucracy surrounding police resignations was such that it took nearly a year before they finally released me. Soon enough, as a passive collaborator in a failed coup against the elected government, the ‘Super’ was retired before his time. I later learned that he was able to prove a certain percentage of white ancestry; thus, according to the laws of the time, he was allowed to settle in Australia. After the failed coup, officers were required to man the country’s reserve army, and I was selected for a commission in the volunteer force (equivalent to the Territorial Army in the UK). After six months of square bashing and studying military law, I became a 2nd Lieutenant ('one pipper') in the Pioneer Corps. This was 1961/62.
However, part-time soldiering did not satisfy me. I now considered immigrating to the UK, to work, but also with the hope of returning to my studies and improving my chances in life. I applied to the British High Commission and was awarded a ‘priority voucher’ to enter Britain.
Along with two of my schoolmates I embarked on a voyage to the UK on the French passenger ship SS Vietnam in March 1963. We just avoided one of the worst winters of the UK in recorded history (1962). We disembarked at Marseilles after 14 days of sailing via Suez and took the night train across France to reach Calais the following morning. On the cross-channel ferry, we were all sick, throwing up the hastily eaten pork pies overboard before arriving at Folkestone on a grey and gloomy afternoon. An express train then disgorged us at Victoria Railway Station, London, as evening fell. It was 30 March 1963.
Five years of menial work – washing dishes, factory assembly, van driving, night security patrolling, ice-cream seller, postman and the like – was my lot while I acquired GCE A’ levels through self-study, extending over a period of three to four years. My subjects were English Literature, British Constitution and Economics. I had to overcome another hurdle before I was allowed to enter London University to read psychology for a BA Honors degree. The requirement was for a GCE O’ Level in a modern European language. I attended evening classes at the West London College in Nottinghill for a year, before I got that qualification in French. Since I did not have science subjects at GCE A’ Level, my qualification would not be designated a B.Sc. although the curriculum and the final examinations were the same for both the BA (Hons.) and the B.Sc. However, I had to pass an internal mathematics paper before I was finally declared suitable to read psychology as a full-time student at the University of London, Goldsmiths College (1968-1971).
It took a while before I was finally awarded the annual £400 grant covering the three-year period of my degree studies. I was attracted to psychology mainly because of the narrative and literary charm of Freud's and Jung’s writings; although at the time I could not have articulated it as such. I was therefore disappointed by the dull ‘experimental’ and statistical treatment of the subject that the course at Goldsmiths required. It was the heyday of behaviorism and what went on inside one’s head, the ‘black box’, was ignored completely. The word ‘mind’ was taboo and anything relating to consciousness was dismissed as being 'metaphysical', a term of opprobrium for almost all psychologists of the time.
Meanwhile, I found that I was always short of money after paying the weekly rent for my digs and had to ration my food intake and visits to the launderette. Soon, I found a uniformed job as a security guard where I could work the whole of the weekend at a factory site eating stale sandwiches and drinking coffee from a Thermos flask, and, earning a mere 'fiver' (£5) for my pains. Unfortunately, this restricted the time available for serious study at the college library as well as at the London University Senate House Library. I left university with just a Lower Second class degree, which I soon found to my dismay, was almost worthless in the job market.
After a short period as a proofreader at a publishing house, I returned to work as a van driver, not only because it paid better, but because of the freedom it gave me to be away from the put downs and backbiting I found endemic in an office environment. I delivered anodized metal work to householders in Edmonton and Tottenham in North London, and returned the finished (assembled) products back to the factory. While engaged in this job, I had the opportunity to read the London evening newspapers. In those days in London, there was an Evening News, in addition to the Evening Standard, which is still much in evidence today. The Evening News carried IQ test-type quizzes over a period of a few weeks and I discovered that I was quite adept at doing them. So, I applied to take the supervised test and found myself a member of British Mensa.
Mensa paved the way eventually for me to become a Chartered Psychologist. Once, I was invited to the Blackheath home of the British Mensa President, Victor Serebriakoff, for lunch. I was also one of the participants in a televised programme on Mensa, presided over by David Dimbleby in 1973. The Belbins (Eunice and Meredith) at the Industrial Training Research Unit in Cambridge saw me on the program, called me up, tested me further, and offered me my first job in applied psychology as a research assistant. Much later, in 1980 with a Masters degree in occupational psychology from Birkbeck College, I was officially allowed to call myself an occupational psychologist. Much of my professional work since has been in rehabilitating the disabled and disadvantaged in the workplace; with them I developed a great affinity.
In August 1974, I left my job and digs at Cambridge, sold my little old Mini for £100, packed everything else I possessed in a suitcase, and left with two Cambridge girls in a Vauxhall Estate owned by one of them on an overland trip to India. Before I left Cambridge, I had appeared before an interview panel which selected psychologists for the Educational and Occupational Assessment Service, a government department in the Ministry of Labour and Social Services in Lusaka, Zambia. They were keen to have me, but I asked to be allowed to make the decision after I had completed the trip.
After many adventures, the unlikely trio finally arrived in Bombay in mid-September, where we split up. I continued my journey by train, ferry and taxi to Sri Lanka to reach my younger brother's house, where my parents were also living. My brother, who had risen to a senior position in the Ceylon civil service, and was still a bachelor, had built the three-bedroom detached house with a government loan. 'SET' as he was called (after the initials before his surname), had steadfastly refused to get married in spite of parental pressure.
My parents now turned their attention to me. This was the era of Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike, the world's first woman prime minister. The country, however, was in dire straits economically. There were no decent jobs for someone with my qualifications. People were praying for a chance to get out of the country. Thence, a visitor, a bachelor from the UK, was a very attractive marriage prospect. I soon met a beautiful and demure young lady, nine years my junior, who spoke very good English and was willing to share my life abroad. We had a beautiful, well-attended, traditional wedding at the bride’s home, not far from Colombo, on 3 January 1975.
I quickly telephoned the authorities in Zambia, and accepted their job offer, on condition that they recognized my changed civil status and issue me with two airplane tickets to Lusaka. They readily agreed. My new bride's parents were not exactly overjoyed when they heard that I was taking her daughter to darkest Africa and not to Britain as they had hoped. I had to reassure them that eventually we would return to the 'promised land'. We flew to Lusaka in mid-January 1975 and I took up work as an occupational psychologist with the Educational and Occupational Assessment Service (EOAS).
In Lusaka we were put up at a pleasant hotel and enjoyed several months there in what felt like an extended honeymoon. While I spent most of my day at work, my new wife, Sue (shortened, anglicized name) remained in the hotel room. This irked her somewhat, but she was soon able to secure a job as the personal secretary to an American who headed the World Health Organization branch office in Lusaka. We soon became friends with the American and his wife, and when we finally secured a house to rent, we were able to invite them to dinner. There was a vibrant expatriate community of varied nationalities in Lusaka, and quite a few of them became our personal friends.
Then the inevitable happened, and Sue had to leave her job after eight months to have our first baby. He arrived, a few days later than anticipated, on 21 December 1975. Not long after his first birthday, Sue became pregnant again, but the climate in Lusaka, with Ian Smith, Rhodesia's Prime Minister, bombing us whenever he felt like it, was not all that salubrious. So, reluctantly, I had to agree to let her go back to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, all by herself, with our son T, only a few months after his first birthday, so that she could have the second baby safely in a maternity home in Colombo.
By the time I completed my three-year contract in early 1978, our second son D, on whom I had not set eyes on, was four months old. I was in a hurry to get back, but the Zambian authorities were practically begging me to sign another contract. I had by then been promoted to one of the two Assistant Director positions of the EOAS, and for the last six months or so, was acting Director. They wanted to confirm me as Director. I had to ignore all their pleas and return home.
However, in April 1978 when I returned to the UK alone, I was only able to find work as a clerk with a firm of West End solicitors. With only a first degree in psychology, nobody would recognize me as a psychologist. I found temporary accommodation in a one-bedroom flat belonging to my alma mater Goldsmiths College, during the summer vacation. I was therefore able to bring my family to Britain by July 1978. But our situation was far from satisfactory. When the students started arriving towards the end of September, we had to leave our flat. For the first time in our lives we faced the prospect of homelessness.
The Greenwich local council put us up in temporary accommodation, a ‘dump’ where we were pelted with eggs and our second-hand car was vandalized by yobos. We stuck it out for about three months, feeding our kids on take-away Chinese, until we were able to put down a small deposit on a terraced house in neighboring Plumstead, in southeast London. Even with my three year stint as an occupational psychologist in Zambia, apprenticed, as it were, to experienced British psychologists, I was told that without a postgraduate qualification, I could not work as a psychologist in Britain. My chances of returning to a professional work role began to look very slim indeed. When finally I was able to get my savings across to the UK from Zambia, I foolishly believed that with a young family, leasing a corner shop selling sweets and tobacco would secure my financial future. This venture proved very ill-advised. It was based in New Cross, not far from Goldsmiths College. The shop was broken into several times and we were threatened with violence by putative customers, who refused to pay for items they grabbed from our shelves. Gangs of schoolboys began to plague us, too.
My wife then took up clerical work with a bank in the City and I closed the shop down to concentrate on gaining an Occupational Psychology M.Sc. degree from London University's Birkbeck College. I could just about claim four years work experience as a psychologist in order to qualify for admission for the two-year part time course. Just before I qualified in 1982, I was able to get a temporary job as an occupational psychologist at the Waddon Employment Rehabilitation Centre, near Croydon in Surrey. Although we could sell our house in Plumstead and move closer to my place of work in Croydon, we had great difficulty getting rid of the lease of the now empty shop premises. Finally, I managed to transfer it back to the previous owner for a pittance.
After a period of nearly a year, I was confirmed in my job with the Manpower Services Commission (MSC). I continued working at the Waddon Employment Rehabilitation Centre (ERC) for over seven years at the same basic grade, while even those new entrants to the profession whom I had helped to train were promoted to senior positions. My manager at the ERC championed my cause since he saw me as one of the better psychologists he had come across during his period of service with the MSC. The latter, by then, had undergone many changes and was renamed the Training Education and Employment Directorate. I was impelled to take my grievance of lack of promotion to an Employment Tribunal. At the height of the Thatcher rule, this was very ill-advised, and I lost my case. The concept of ‘institutional racism’ was not yet recognized. I was then transferred to the Head Office in Sheffield and served one year commuting between Croydon and Sheffield, spending only weekends at home. In 1989 I found myself returning as a Higher Psychologist, a new designation concocted as a compromise between the Basic Grade and the Senior Grade, to work in a residential Employment Rehabilitation Centre in Egham, Surrey. This involved a daily drive of over 30 miles on the M20 to my place of work.
Since I sensed some harassment in the workplace in the form of the missives I received from the Head Office, I resigned in 1990. After a short period in the wilderness trying to sell insurance and the like, I took up private consultancy work as an expert witness in personal injury litigation, redundancy counselling, and running job search workshops. As the work was intermittent, I wasn't making a living, and although my wife was now working for the Home Office, we failed to keep up the mortgage payments regularly. We were taken to court and nearly lost our home and all that we had worked for.
By then I had also acquired a teaching qualification from the University of Greenwich, which again proved worthless in securing employment. I was in my late fifties and no prospective employer, I thought, would take a second look at me. I had been applying literally for hundreds of jobs, even simple clerical ibe, with all my efforts proving fruitless. However, just in the nick of time, early in 1996, my sixtieth year, I was invited to an interview at the Royal British Legion Industries (RBLI) at the Royal British Legion Village, in Aylesford, Kent, a 30 mile drive away from my home. The position advertised was for an occupational psychologist, specifically for someone to launch a vocational assessment and development centre on the same lines as that of the MSC employment rehabilitation centres. By this time the ERCs were being phased out.
I was interviewed by the Health Services Manager. She appeared to be impressed enough to consign a large sheaf of applications for the position lying on her table to the dustbin, and to hire me on the spot. I established from scratch the RBLI vocational assessment and development facility catering to the employment rehabilitation needs of ex-service men and women from all over the UK. At last, my work began to be widely appreciated. I worked at the RBLI until I reached the state retirement age of 65 in June 2001. By February 2001 I had completed writing the book Counselling in Careers Guidance, published by the Open University Press, as one of a series entitled ‘Counselling in Context’, edited by Moira Walker and Michael Jacobs. In 2004 the book was translated into Japanese.
At the age of seven, I was required to walk seven miles to the nearest English school attached to a Catholic seminary. Since my parents were transferred from one village school to another, miles apart, every four or five years, I was soon placed in a boarding school in the hill capital Kandy. Between the ages of 10 and 12, I attended another school, this time at Kalutara, a seaside resort. At the age of 12, the year we received independence from the ‘mother country', Britain (1948), I managed to pass the entrance exam to a prestigious public school in the capital Colombo.
By this time, I had acquired a good grasp of the English language and had become fond of reading whatever books I could lay my hands on. The school library was well stocked with literary works, including the English classics, and although we rarely listened to the radio, the library shelves were stacked with British weeklies like The Listener. A local daily newspaper, The Ceylon Daily News, reproduced the British Daily Telegraph’s cryptic crossword, which I invariably struggled to complete.
By the time I reached the sixth form, reading Darwin, Freud and Marx gave me license to see myself as a ’free thinker'. When the principal tried to persuade me to undertake a Buddhist religious observance (Sil), I flatly refused, an action I later realized had cost my place at the one and only university in the country at the time. This was in spite of my winning the class prize for English every year. I regularly contributed short stories and articles to the annual college magazine. Quite often the local Daily News also published my sketches and stories in a weekly page set apart for children’s contributions.
Being a weakling physically meant that I had not made any mark on sports or athletic activities at the college. With only a few GCE O’ Levels to my name, the best paid and most glamorous job one could get was as a Sub-inspector of Police. These positions were much sought after and required applicants to face very stiff competition. It took me over three years to build myself up physically and acquire swimming certificates, as well as confidence, to enable me to enter the Police Training School as one of 27 trainee sub-inspectors. In the meantime, I worked as a clerk at the Auditor General’s Office in Colombo 7. I was almost 22 when I joined the police. It took so long because of the background checks into my extended family of grandparents, aunts and uncles scattered around the island. I surprised myself as one of the best shots in the Police Training School and beat the trainee Assistant Superintendents (all graduates) at regular tests in law. I was also leader of the debating team. I believed I had more than made up for my lack of sporting and athletic achievements.
As a Probationary Sub-inspector, I was posted at a provincial police headquarters. I soon became an Assistant Officer-in-Charge (OIC) and was sent as Acting OIC to smaller stations in the provinces when other officers went on leave or were training for higher positions. At one of these remote stations, I took full control of a murder investigation, apprehended the absconding murderer and later (much later) proved my case in the Supreme Court, entirely based on circumstantial evidence. I was highly commended by the judge. However, when I charged a powerful individual with possession of a vast quantity of cannabis, this proved to be my undoing. I was immediately transferred to the Colombo Headquarters for a desk job in Traffic and Information. I did not realize that my new superior (Superintendent) was under suspicion for corrupt practices and had been placed there, away from direct contact with the public, as a kind of punishment. According to subordinate staff, he had expected a backhander from me before he would confirm me in my post at the end of the probationary period of three years. He delayed my confirmation by six months. I confronted him, and thoroughly disgruntled, handed him my resignation.
The bureaucracy surrounding police resignations was such that it took nearly a year before they finally released me. Soon enough, as a passive collaborator in a failed coup against the elected government, the ‘Super’ was retired before his time. I later learned that he was able to prove a certain percentage of white ancestry; thus, according to the laws of the time, he was allowed to settle in Australia. After the failed coup, officers were required to man the country’s reserve army, and I was selected for a commission in the volunteer force (equivalent to the Territorial Army in the UK). After six months of square bashing and studying military law, I became a 2nd Lieutenant ('one pipper') in the Pioneer Corps. This was 1961/62.
However, part-time soldiering did not satisfy me. I now considered immigrating to the UK, to work, but also with the hope of returning to my studies and improving my chances in life. I applied to the British High Commission and was awarded a ‘priority voucher’ to enter Britain.
Along with two of my schoolmates I embarked on a voyage to the UK on the French passenger ship SS Vietnam in March 1963. We just avoided one of the worst winters of the UK in recorded history (1962). We disembarked at Marseilles after 14 days of sailing via Suez and took the night train across France to reach Calais the following morning. On the cross-channel ferry, we were all sick, throwing up the hastily eaten pork pies overboard before arriving at Folkestone on a grey and gloomy afternoon. An express train then disgorged us at Victoria Railway Station, London, as evening fell. It was 30 March 1963.
Five years of menial work – washing dishes, factory assembly, van driving, night security patrolling, ice-cream seller, postman and the like – was my lot while I acquired GCE A’ levels through self-study, extending over a period of three to four years. My subjects were English Literature, British Constitution and Economics. I had to overcome another hurdle before I was allowed to enter London University to read psychology for a BA Honors degree. The requirement was for a GCE O’ Level in a modern European language. I attended evening classes at the West London College in Nottinghill for a year, before I got that qualification in French. Since I did not have science subjects at GCE A’ Level, my qualification would not be designated a B.Sc. although the curriculum and the final examinations were the same for both the BA (Hons.) and the B.Sc. However, I had to pass an internal mathematics paper before I was finally declared suitable to read psychology as a full-time student at the University of London, Goldsmiths College (1968-1971).
It took a while before I was finally awarded the annual £400 grant covering the three-year period of my degree studies. I was attracted to psychology mainly because of the narrative and literary charm of Freud's and Jung’s writings; although at the time I could not have articulated it as such. I was therefore disappointed by the dull ‘experimental’ and statistical treatment of the subject that the course at Goldsmiths required. It was the heyday of behaviorism and what went on inside one’s head, the ‘black box’, was ignored completely. The word ‘mind’ was taboo and anything relating to consciousness was dismissed as being 'metaphysical', a term of opprobrium for almost all psychologists of the time.
Meanwhile, I found that I was always short of money after paying the weekly rent for my digs and had to ration my food intake and visits to the launderette. Soon, I found a uniformed job as a security guard where I could work the whole of the weekend at a factory site eating stale sandwiches and drinking coffee from a Thermos flask, and, earning a mere 'fiver' (£5) for my pains. Unfortunately, this restricted the time available for serious study at the college library as well as at the London University Senate House Library. I left university with just a Lower Second class degree, which I soon found to my dismay, was almost worthless in the job market.
After a short period as a proofreader at a publishing house, I returned to work as a van driver, not only because it paid better, but because of the freedom it gave me to be away from the put downs and backbiting I found endemic in an office environment. I delivered anodized metal work to householders in Edmonton and Tottenham in North London, and returned the finished (assembled) products back to the factory. While engaged in this job, I had the opportunity to read the London evening newspapers. In those days in London, there was an Evening News, in addition to the Evening Standard, which is still much in evidence today. The Evening News carried IQ test-type quizzes over a period of a few weeks and I discovered that I was quite adept at doing them. So, I applied to take the supervised test and found myself a member of British Mensa.
Mensa paved the way eventually for me to become a Chartered Psychologist. Once, I was invited to the Blackheath home of the British Mensa President, Victor Serebriakoff, for lunch. I was also one of the participants in a televised programme on Mensa, presided over by David Dimbleby in 1973. The Belbins (Eunice and Meredith) at the Industrial Training Research Unit in Cambridge saw me on the program, called me up, tested me further, and offered me my first job in applied psychology as a research assistant. Much later, in 1980 with a Masters degree in occupational psychology from Birkbeck College, I was officially allowed to call myself an occupational psychologist. Much of my professional work since has been in rehabilitating the disabled and disadvantaged in the workplace; with them I developed a great affinity.
In August 1974, I left my job and digs at Cambridge, sold my little old Mini for £100, packed everything else I possessed in a suitcase, and left with two Cambridge girls in a Vauxhall Estate owned by one of them on an overland trip to India. Before I left Cambridge, I had appeared before an interview panel which selected psychologists for the Educational and Occupational Assessment Service, a government department in the Ministry of Labour and Social Services in Lusaka, Zambia. They were keen to have me, but I asked to be allowed to make the decision after I had completed the trip.
After many adventures, the unlikely trio finally arrived in Bombay in mid-September, where we split up. I continued my journey by train, ferry and taxi to Sri Lanka to reach my younger brother's house, where my parents were also living. My brother, who had risen to a senior position in the Ceylon civil service, and was still a bachelor, had built the three-bedroom detached house with a government loan. 'SET' as he was called (after the initials before his surname), had steadfastly refused to get married in spite of parental pressure.
My parents now turned their attention to me. This was the era of Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike, the world's first woman prime minister. The country, however, was in dire straits economically. There were no decent jobs for someone with my qualifications. People were praying for a chance to get out of the country. Thence, a visitor, a bachelor from the UK, was a very attractive marriage prospect. I soon met a beautiful and demure young lady, nine years my junior, who spoke very good English and was willing to share my life abroad. We had a beautiful, well-attended, traditional wedding at the bride’s home, not far from Colombo, on 3 January 1975.
I quickly telephoned the authorities in Zambia, and accepted their job offer, on condition that they recognized my changed civil status and issue me with two airplane tickets to Lusaka. They readily agreed. My new bride's parents were not exactly overjoyed when they heard that I was taking her daughter to darkest Africa and not to Britain as they had hoped. I had to reassure them that eventually we would return to the 'promised land'. We flew to Lusaka in mid-January 1975 and I took up work as an occupational psychologist with the Educational and Occupational Assessment Service (EOAS).
In Lusaka we were put up at a pleasant hotel and enjoyed several months there in what felt like an extended honeymoon. While I spent most of my day at work, my new wife, Sue (shortened, anglicized name) remained in the hotel room. This irked her somewhat, but she was soon able to secure a job as the personal secretary to an American who headed the World Health Organization branch office in Lusaka. We soon became friends with the American and his wife, and when we finally secured a house to rent, we were able to invite them to dinner. There was a vibrant expatriate community of varied nationalities in Lusaka, and quite a few of them became our personal friends.
Then the inevitable happened, and Sue had to leave her job after eight months to have our first baby. He arrived, a few days later than anticipated, on 21 December 1975. Not long after his first birthday, Sue became pregnant again, but the climate in Lusaka, with Ian Smith, Rhodesia's Prime Minister, bombing us whenever he felt like it, was not all that salubrious. So, reluctantly, I had to agree to let her go back to Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, all by herself, with our son T, only a few months after his first birthday, so that she could have the second baby safely in a maternity home in Colombo.
By the time I completed my three-year contract in early 1978, our second son D, on whom I had not set eyes on, was four months old. I was in a hurry to get back, but the Zambian authorities were practically begging me to sign another contract. I had by then been promoted to one of the two Assistant Director positions of the EOAS, and for the last six months or so, was acting Director. They wanted to confirm me as Director. I had to ignore all their pleas and return home.
However, in April 1978 when I returned to the UK alone, I was only able to find work as a clerk with a firm of West End solicitors. With only a first degree in psychology, nobody would recognize me as a psychologist. I found temporary accommodation in a one-bedroom flat belonging to my alma mater Goldsmiths College, during the summer vacation. I was therefore able to bring my family to Britain by July 1978. But our situation was far from satisfactory. When the students started arriving towards the end of September, we had to leave our flat. For the first time in our lives we faced the prospect of homelessness.
The Greenwich local council put us up in temporary accommodation, a ‘dump’ where we were pelted with eggs and our second-hand car was vandalized by yobos. We stuck it out for about three months, feeding our kids on take-away Chinese, until we were able to put down a small deposit on a terraced house in neighboring Plumstead, in southeast London. Even with my three year stint as an occupational psychologist in Zambia, apprenticed, as it were, to experienced British psychologists, I was told that without a postgraduate qualification, I could not work as a psychologist in Britain. My chances of returning to a professional work role began to look very slim indeed. When finally I was able to get my savings across to the UK from Zambia, I foolishly believed that with a young family, leasing a corner shop selling sweets and tobacco would secure my financial future. This venture proved very ill-advised. It was based in New Cross, not far from Goldsmiths College. The shop was broken into several times and we were threatened with violence by putative customers, who refused to pay for items they grabbed from our shelves. Gangs of schoolboys began to plague us, too.
My wife then took up clerical work with a bank in the City and I closed the shop down to concentrate on gaining an Occupational Psychology M.Sc. degree from London University's Birkbeck College. I could just about claim four years work experience as a psychologist in order to qualify for admission for the two-year part time course. Just before I qualified in 1982, I was able to get a temporary job as an occupational psychologist at the Waddon Employment Rehabilitation Centre, near Croydon in Surrey. Although we could sell our house in Plumstead and move closer to my place of work in Croydon, we had great difficulty getting rid of the lease of the now empty shop premises. Finally, I managed to transfer it back to the previous owner for a pittance.
After a period of nearly a year, I was confirmed in my job with the Manpower Services Commission (MSC). I continued working at the Waddon Employment Rehabilitation Centre (ERC) for over seven years at the same basic grade, while even those new entrants to the profession whom I had helped to train were promoted to senior positions. My manager at the ERC championed my cause since he saw me as one of the better psychologists he had come across during his period of service with the MSC. The latter, by then, had undergone many changes and was renamed the Training Education and Employment Directorate. I was impelled to take my grievance of lack of promotion to an Employment Tribunal. At the height of the Thatcher rule, this was very ill-advised, and I lost my case. The concept of ‘institutional racism’ was not yet recognized. I was then transferred to the Head Office in Sheffield and served one year commuting between Croydon and Sheffield, spending only weekends at home. In 1989 I found myself returning as a Higher Psychologist, a new designation concocted as a compromise between the Basic Grade and the Senior Grade, to work in a residential Employment Rehabilitation Centre in Egham, Surrey. This involved a daily drive of over 30 miles on the M20 to my place of work.
Since I sensed some harassment in the workplace in the form of the missives I received from the Head Office, I resigned in 1990. After a short period in the wilderness trying to sell insurance and the like, I took up private consultancy work as an expert witness in personal injury litigation, redundancy counselling, and running job search workshops. As the work was intermittent, I wasn't making a living, and although my wife was now working for the Home Office, we failed to keep up the mortgage payments regularly. We were taken to court and nearly lost our home and all that we had worked for.
By then I had also acquired a teaching qualification from the University of Greenwich, which again proved worthless in securing employment. I was in my late fifties and no prospective employer, I thought, would take a second look at me. I had been applying literally for hundreds of jobs, even simple clerical ibe, with all my efforts proving fruitless. However, just in the nick of time, early in 1996, my sixtieth year, I was invited to an interview at the Royal British Legion Industries (RBLI) at the Royal British Legion Village, in Aylesford, Kent, a 30 mile drive away from my home. The position advertised was for an occupational psychologist, specifically for someone to launch a vocational assessment and development centre on the same lines as that of the MSC employment rehabilitation centres. By this time the ERCs were being phased out.
I was interviewed by the Health Services Manager. She appeared to be impressed enough to consign a large sheaf of applications for the position lying on her table to the dustbin, and to hire me on the spot. I established from scratch the RBLI vocational assessment and development facility catering to the employment rehabilitation needs of ex-service men and women from all over the UK. At last, my work began to be widely appreciated. I worked at the RBLI until I reached the state retirement age of 65 in June 2001. By February 2001 I had completed writing the book Counselling in Careers Guidance, published by the Open University Press, as one of a series entitled ‘Counselling in Context’, edited by Moira Walker and Michael Jacobs. In 2004 the book was translated into Japanese.
Migel & Sue
Until my wife retired in 2005, I tried my hand at various odd jobs such as being a courier and market research interviewer, but was happy to give it all up and move to the Costa Blanca, Spain, in November 2005.
Long before I immigrated to the UK, an astrologer I consulted predicted that I would become a prize-winning author. Well past the biblical life span of three score years and ten, I still live with that hope.
Long before I immigrated to the UK, an astrologer I consulted predicted that I would become a prize-winning author. Well past the biblical life span of three score years and ten, I still live with that hope.
Patricia Roy (Canada): You both so deserve your beautiful retirement in your gorgeous home in Costa Blanca!
And in case you misunderstood my "in bits" comment on your other story, (English might mean bits as tears) but I meant "rolling over with laughter." Couldn't get the idea of you hiding your face out of my head for hours!
Great pieces of writing.
And in case you misunderstood my "in bits" comment on your other story, (English might mean bits as tears) but I meant "rolling over with laughter." Couldn't get the idea of you hiding your face out of my head for hours!
Great pieces of writing.
