Mavis Lee Wah- teacher, actor, activist, leader

by Zorina Shah

I didn’t go to Naparima Girls’ High School, you can probably tell by the way I still speak with my Lochmaben village accent. In high school, I had no interest in drama although I did appear in an opera. It may have been Alladin. 

I never met Mavis Lee Wah until I started working in newspapers in the early seventies when I saw her in a number of plays.  Her role as Lady Macbeth (1974) could be my favourite. She and her husband James were among the first people to help me find my feet in a strange town. I had thought the town folks were clannish but the Lee Wahs helped me change that view. 

I grew close to the San Fernando Arts Council. The Naparima Bowl was alive with song and dance and drama and the queen shows and numerous festivals. I must have seen every dance troupe before the auditorium was destroyed by fire. They included Eugene Joseph’s Dance Theatre, Joyce Kirton, Torrance Mohammed’s Arawaks and Eric Butler with whom I also taught. I saw numerous plays and while I liked the staging of Thomas Hardy’s ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ I walked out on a Drama Guild production of a Shakespeare play at Presentation College auditorium.

It was in times like those in the 70s that I saw Derek Walcott’s “O Babylon” and the visiting Senegalese National Dance Company.

While I was a spectator to these events, I was a participant in the activities of the San Fernando Citizens Action Committee founded by James Lee Wah. At a Town Hall meeting organised by the Committee I, as one of the invited speakers, froze. The words just wouldn’t come out. Mavis was sitting in the front row, looked me in the eye and gave me the gesture to try again. It wasn’t the only time I had lost my voice. I was a member of the San Fernando Writers’ Association and we were reciting a poem at the San Fernando Arts Festival. Not a word came out of my mouth.

As members of the Citizens Action Committee, Mavis and I stood side by side holding placards in demand for a link road off the Lady Hailes Avenue and to stop the destruction of the San Fernando Hill. Motorists would drive past and ridicule us and she once asked me if I was not bothered by the comments. The link road is what is known as the Gulf City Link Road. One day after she finished school at Naparima Girls, we gathered on Pointe a Pierre Road for the walk up San Fernando Hill. It was there that we saw schoolchildren playing in a huge pond of muddied water. 

Mungal Chattergoon had returned from England and he too was a member of the San Fernando Citizens Action Committee. He took the pictures which we used in the Express the following day, a Thursday.

The Borough’s Statutory meeting was that same Thursday. Mayor Gertrude Kirton placed the San Fernando Hill at the top of the order of business. She called me by name and referred to the article. Then she ordered that all cutting on the hill be stopped. She called out the City Engineer Vasco Loreilhe and Superintendent of Police Fitzroy Fahey and asked them to arrange the documentation to cease destruction of the hill.

I saw less of James and Mavis after they left San Fernando for Gran Couva. About four years ago I received a lengthy hand written letter from them.

I checked on line today for a picture of Mavis and found just these two. I am sure we could find many among Mungal’s files, the teacher, the actress, the activist. 

Yesterday June 24, Mavis died. May her soul rest in peace.