Bwana Bartlett

The word 'bwana' in KiSwahili means 'sir' or 'mister'. In colonial East Africa, it was the word people put in front of a man's surname in the way we use 'Mr' except that it had much more of a sense of respect - so the picture above is of my father, Bwana Haylett. It could also be used alone: so one of my father's employees, when speaking to him, would call him "Bwana". As a boy, it could be used to address me by, for example, our servants, though in that case the word 'kidogo' might be added to make clear that I was a 'small bwana'. Inevitably, the word was overwhelmingly used to address Europeans and less applied to other races.

In her writings about her time in East Africa, my mother usually refers to any male European by his first and surname, perhaps with the exception of very senior people like a governor. There was, to my knowledge, only one exception, a man my parents first met in Zanzibar, to whom my mother refers, throughout her writing, as 'Bwana Bartlett'. 

Bwana Bartlett was the Secretary-Manager of the Clove Growers Association, set up by the British administration to protect the interests of the Zanzibar growers who had become very indebted to local money lenders. Although my mother's primary job was as assistant to the Chief Secretary, she also worked for the Clove Growers Association and, during the Second World War, for the Economic Control Board which oversaw the distribution and rationing of food, of which Bwana Bartlett was also a member.

My parents became great friends with Bwana Bartlett, staying in his house when they visited Zanzibar. I also recall staying with him in 1950 at his huge, German-built bungalow near Tanga called Geiglitz (above), by which time he was working for the Tanganyika Sisal Corporation.

I wouldn't have thought of Bwana Bartlett had a friend not sent me this postcard, written by my mother to his parents, who had known my parents in Zanzibar and Mombasa, inviting them to stay in their house near Hastings so they could enjoy a week of cricket together, something which became an annual event. On the front of the postcard, in the space reserved for the address, my mother wrote, "Bwana Bartlett died on June 4th". There is no date on the postcard but I'm almost certain that this was the summer of my North Africa trip, 1964.

There is one reference on the internet which I am fairly certain is to Bwana Bartlett: he was probably a member of a committee which produced a report on the clove industry in 1933, 'Report of a Mission Appointed to Investigate the Clove Trade in India and Burma, Ceylon, British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies'. Zanzibar isn't mentioned in its title, which suggests that Bwana Bartlett wrote it before he came to East Africa, but it does reveal that he was C A Bartlett, but that is as far as the trail leads.

None of this matters much except an intriguing question, to which I have no answer: why was he referred to, even by his close friends, as 'Bwana' Bartlett?