Growing up in a small village called Sea Cow Lake was a beautiful life filled with excited that one can only read about in books like Huckelberry Finn and Treasure Island. Although this area was primarily occupied by Indian people under South Africas Apartheid rules these people were simple farming community. I together with my parents and grandparents lived at number 58 Hippo Road on the same plot. My regular activiies included working in the fields digging up the earth, planting herb seeds, watering the crop and harvesting the crop. Co-incidently one could drop a line in the nearby umgeni river, tend to ones crops and return hours later to find a fat catch of some river fish good enough to be fashioned into fish cakes by my hard working mother.
In those early days the ISKCON members would frequent our street and have their Harinam Kirtans. Little did I know that some years later I would make contact with these devotees of Lord Krsna. Contary to popular belief many Indians knew about Lord Jaganath as they had the Jaganath Musical Band. They als used to music nights called Nagara whence they would sing all night using different ragas. The uniqueness of the ISKCON tradition at that time was that white bodied people (europeans) were preaching to Indian people about their culture whilst the Apartheild regime (europeans) was trying to crush the Indian culture by preaching Christianity to the Indians.
The remoteness of Sea Cow Lake allowed a delayed impact of the Christian preaching program thus ISKCON took a stronger foot hold in Sea Cow lake as compared to other Indian areas and which eventually spread into Phoenix especially after the people of Sea Cow Lake was relocated with promises of running water, electricity and cheap brick houses in Phoenix. One can still find perhaps one or two wood and tin styled houses in Sea Cow lake.
As was customary we all walked long distances for anything like bread, milk and just visting some family thus I think I developed the endurance to walk long distances and eventually could run long distances including the gruelling 87 km Comrades Marathon. Some where on the top on one of the Inchanga hills I noticed a Rock Painting which resembled that of a picture I had seen of Lord Jaganath and ISKCON’s Ratha Yatra Chariot Procession. This inspired me to establish a running Club -called Jaganath Athletic Club.
Completed 13 Comrades Marathons, Published 1 poem, Anthology of verse, currently writing a biopgraphy of my late Father.
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