Andrea Downer, outlook writer
Ian Allen /Staff Photographer - Marlene Dawson.
I WAS BUSY trying to do what was for me a complex reverse in my car when I saw her. It was mid morning, about 10 o'clock, when the sun is usually at its cruellest. I had just reversed past an intersection, (something I probably shouldn't have done) when I did a double take. She was perspiring in the hot mid morning sun. A sun visor partially obscured her face. She had just stopped in front of a house, and was flipping through her saddlebag. I thought "Wow! A postwoman!"
Persons who are fortunate enough to have their mail delivered to them, expect to see a postman when they hear the familiar tinkle of a bicycle bell. But for nine years, 35-year-old Marlene Dawson has been a postwoman at the Bridgeport Post Office in Portmore, St. Catherine.
It is the face of Marlene that the residents of Bridgeport and Westmeade see when they go out to collect their mail, and according to Marlene, it is a face they have come to love. But how did this resident of Greenwich Town come to be working in a traditionally male dominated occupation?
"It was when post workers did strike in October 1995. When I turn up for work, they ask me if I can ride and I said yes. They did not believe me until one day I rode to work," Marlene said in her husky voice that has more than a trace of the tomboy she says lurks in her soul.
She had been working at the Central Sorting Office, sorting mail, three months before the strike. She was sent to Bridgeport Post Office to assist and that is where she has been working ever since.
'You go girl!'
"Everybody loves me," Marlene enthused. Women toot their horns and wave when they pass me on the road. Some of them say, "You go girl!"
Marlene says she has been riding since she was 13 years old when she used to borrow the bicycles of boys in her community.
"I used to ride with a posse of pure guys from Water House, Jones Town and Rose Town go to dance all over," she confessed.
Marlene clearly has a love affair with riding. She says it is the riding she loves most about her job.
"I ride go anywhere," she stated boldly. Her mother, who was hovering nearby nodded her head vigorously in agreement. "Mi ride go as far as Papine," Marlene continued.
"Ah rider them call her," her mother interjected. She explained that Marlene, who had attended the Greenwich Town All-Age School and the Alpha Academy, was very athletic and proudly brought home several certificates and medals that she had won while at school.
But when Marlene was just an uncertain school girl, still poised on the threshold of womanhood, what visions of the future danced in her head? She wanted to be a soldier, but that dream is one of several that had to be shelved. She said because of a series of unfortunate incidents, she has been forced to make choices that did not include being recruited in the army.
"My parents didn't have it," Marlene confided. "We never went hungry, but certain things, such as our personal effects, we had to provide for ourselves."
She worked at a wholesale downtown during holiday breaks from school, and continued full-time after she graduated from high school, as her father had become ill and she had to assist with the family finances. She left that job for the one at the post office. She might not have fulfilled her dream of becoming a soldier, but she has strong survival skills. Marlene describes herself as the backbone of her family. She says she has had to play vital roles when her mother had to have a major surgery on her eyes and again when her father died.
This bubbly young mother who has pedalled her way into a male dominated profession and into the hearts of those she serves, has had her fair share of disappointments and heartaches. Her boyfriend and business partner was robbed and killed in 1994. She said that not only devastated her, but destroyed a business that they had operated together as he was the main force behind it.
Challenges
She has got over those challenges and is now in a relationship with the father of her three-year-old son. While juggling the task of being a working mom, Marlene finds the time to be a volunteer with Aglow International, which she describes as a network of caring Christian women who minister to women in prisons and visit children in state run homes.
Although she was not able to realise some of her childhood goals, Marlene still has dreams. She hopes to begin a four-month course in geriatrics at the Portmore Community College next month and get a job as a nurse's assistance. Until then, the next time you see a postal worker and hear a tinkling bell, it might not be a postman, it might be Marlene, pedalling her way to success.
