The Long Road Parts 4 to 6
Part 4
My Children
I’m going to start this one off with something I wrote on the 20/1/96.
‘My Children’
Let dreams of freedom fill my children’s sleep,
May their thoughts fly among the stars,
When they weep, let them go there,
A smile lingering on their lips,
Find them rest in safety,
For there are too many for me,
Give them somewhere to hide,
When the darkest fear prowls their corridors,
Tiny souls fighting the world uphill,
Only wishing to be loved,
Reach for them and hold them near,
Relieve them of their nightmare,
Take them to your garden where everything is perfect,
Give them refuge beneath your wings,
Lay their pain on me,
I will cry their tears,
I will take the beatings,
I will sleep with their fears,
But for them I ask for peace,
May they sleep soundly forever.
Joey
I feel such a heavy weight and I guess it’s one that will linger on forever. I tried to protect as many kids as I could when I was in the group even though I was just a child myself but I had to. Someone had to do something. I’d own up to things and take the blame for things I didn’t do. One time sticks out in my memory from a house in Jabulpur and it’s one of those memories where I’m not sure where the line could be drawn with what the COG made Dad do, and what he just did off his own bat. He loved complete control and authority and pushed it on as many people as he could. He loved being a leader in the COG and wore that mantle keenly.
We had a Merit and De-merit system at one stage with us kids and at one stage I had ‘say’ 15 Merits for doing good things etc, my sister was a bit hopeless and forgetful and ended up with 10 De-merits. Now you might get a treat for the merits and no treats for the de merits as there were no real hard and fast outcomes. So Dad came and looked at the sheet and started saying things like “Good work Joey and the ‘next bro’ etc and then Oh dear, but look at ‘bad sis’, looks like she’s been naughty this week”. I jumped in with a, “I’ll trade my Merits, for her De-merits and that will even everything out, I didn’t mind not getting a treat”. I was going to forfeit whatever benefit the merits were going to give me so she didn’t get in trouble. Dad was furious that I was messing with his system and decided that this week the punishment for the de-merits was a spanking. He made a big deal out of it and got all the kids to line up and watch. He drew parallels with Jesus taking on the punishment for the sins of the world, got me to pull my pants down and bend over the bed. He then hit me with a piece of bamboo at least 10 times. It was excruciatingly painful, by the time he was done, the bamboo had split in the middle and so when it flew through the air, it opened up a bit and then came together when it hit me. I had welts all over my backside with blood blisters. I’m crying, the kids were all crying, and he just kept going.
There were times that we had to wear long pants in the middle of summer when we went out busking to cover up the marks that were left on our legs. There were times we all had to line up and either bend over or hold out our hands to be hit with fly swats, wooden spoons, belts, bamboo etc and if you pulled your hand away, you got twice as many. Now I know kids can be naughty and talk back from time to time but given the fear we lived under, I doubt it was that bad but we sure copped some floggings. Us kids would wait till it was over and Dad had gone and then comfort the one who’d just been flogged, inspect the damage and dab the area with a wet towel or something.
I had this recurring dream that my brothers and sisters were all hiding in one corner of the room and the room was filled with trees and vines. There would be two lions laying on a branch of one of the trees and I had to get the kids to the other side of the room to safety but I had to sneak them past the Lions. Sometimes I’d make it but many times the Lions would get me and I’d wake up and the dream would start again as soon as I went back to sleep.
Often you just wanted the beating to happen already because Dad would tell you you were going to get one later and then you might have to wait for hours or days till it happened. He never forgot to deliver and the stress and agony of the anticipation for what it was going to be like was almost worse. We’d be told to stop crying “By the count of 3”, as soon as the punishment had been delivered, “Or you’ll cop more”, but you’d be in agony. So we’d be chocking back the big sobs and Mum would be saying that we didn’t know what pain meant because her dad used to beat her and broke her arm one time she reckons (her story). I’d just wait till the flurry was over and I was alone and then cry to myself, that way the kids didn’t get stressed for me either. There was a lot of high stress and tension. We walked on egg shells and stayed quiet if we couldn’t leave the room altogether! The instability was immesurable.
The powerlessness was the hardest. As kids we were at the complete mercy of the adults in the house but more often than not, at the mercy of Dad and his moods. It’s like he reveled in having us fear him. He wanted complete control and authority and smash down any sign of resistance whether it was on purpose or not. Anyone who knows me and how strong willed I am would know that things didn’t work out for me very often as I was always trying to negotiate something. I was an inquisitive and energetic kid too, which caused issues… I was also in a funny spot because I had to look after all the other kids so often that something would inevitably happen and I’d try and fix it or solve it and end up in trouble for being bigger than my boots!
The little kids would come to me to adjudicate their disputes a lot of the time so that they didn’t get into trouble for telling on each other. What would happen though is that I’d sort it out with them and the kid who didn’t get what they wanted sometimes went and told on me and it would be on again. The kids can’t be blamed for that though as they were still so young and couldn’t grasp what was going on. It was a very delicate situation to live in and tenuous to navigate as a child who was only 7 to 11 at that stage myself.
I pointed a bread and butter knife at my brother once because he was fighting with my sister and not doing his clean up duties of which I was in charge of, he told on me to Dad and that led to another beating in the kitchen in front of all the little kids, I was kicked while on the floor and all. For 3 mths after that I had to call all the kids Sir or Madam and do all the chores myself including getting things for them just to put me ‘In my place’. The problem was, I was very often still left to look after all of them as well as other kids in the commune (up to 20 odd kids at a time) with no authority to bring them into line so I’d get in trouble when things got out of hand as well. Basically I was in a No Win situation.
I know that there are so many people that have had it way worse than I have and so none of this is intended to disparage your experiences, but this is how it was for me.
I’d like to close this card with something I wrote in 2004:
“There is no memorial for those who have suffered the trauma I have experienced. Maybe if it had been a war, it would feel more real. But sometimes it feels as if it were just a bad dream”.
Come to Me
Here are the Lyrics to a song I wrote in the first 1/2 of 2006 for all ‘My Children’ and it’s a massive part of the reason I wrote the whole album “Table with No Legs”. It spells out how I’ve felt and also my desire to offer peace to those who aren’t lucky enough to have it.
If you’d like to listen to it, here’s the link: I hope it works!!
It is the opening song on my album and it reads like this:
Come to Me
I’m looking for my connection
But only finding loose ends
All of my fears and rejections
Raise their ugly heads at the same time.
Well the writing’s not just on one wall
It covers the whole fucking room.
My head is a jail cell
And my time isn’t up soon.
Do you still feel the back of his hand
As he imposes his silent demand.
Been taught your whole life
You can’t say no
So into your head
You once again go
To Me
Come to Me
And I’ll sing you a song so sweet
You’ll forget all the times you felt beat
The scars on your back and your legs dissapear
Along with the shaking that comes with the fear
To Me
Come to Me
And I’ll sing you a song so sweet
You’ll forget all the times you felt beat
The scars on your back and your legs dissappear
Along with the panting you heard in your ear
To Me
Come to Me
Come to Me
There were Good Times
Just to lighten the mood a little, there were plenty of good times. In one house there was an outdoor badminton court and we played lots of games there. At least you could run around the whole house so I would cut laps around it.
A cobra came into the yard one day and the Dad’s o the house tried to kill it but all the Indian locals were yelling at them through the fence as to the Hindus all animals are sacred. They stopped trying but then a Mongoose came in through the fence and killed the Cobra right in front of us all!
When we did all get together for these “Fellowships” , we did have fun as we finally got to see and meet new people. I had a few friends that I’d get to see at these gatherings and while they were all a bit odd in their own way, at least they were my age and we could talk about things that affected us in our stage of life! We’d hang out and talk about all the things that had happened to us that were unfair and nasty and when we did things to / with each other it felt better because at least it was by choice and we were the same age and no one was making us do it!
Besides that, the parents were all too busy off playing their own stupid spin the bottle games that we were finally left alone for a decent amount of time. They’d take over whole properties that were quite isolated so no one could see us and off they went. The days were always chaos for us as kids with prayer meetings and singing and all that, but at night the adults were too pre-occupied so as long as we older kids looked after the little ones, everything was peaceful.
There was one big “Fellowship” at a place in India close to the ocean which was really nice and us kids played spotlight in he dark which was pretty cool.
In one town there was a bit of a coast or river walk and along it there was a park and we’d pay our little 50 Paise or 1/2 a Rupee and get a short horse ride or something. I got a massive hole in my leg from a sharp bit on the swing set there in the evening and the hospitals were all closed so I couldn’t get stitched up straight away, by the time I went the next morning, the wound had to heal open or they’d close the infection in! It took 4 months to heal!!! And I still have the scar on my leg!
Three Hour Prayer Meeting
So at that large “Fellowship” by the ocean, we all stayed in a giant hall with about 40 other families. There was separate accommodation for the more important families! During the camp there were a series of 3 hr long “Prayer Meetings” and I had to go along to one. In these meetings everyone would keep their eyes closed mostly and “Speak in Tongues” which was basically just blabbering on in a gibberish that sounded like it might be in a different language if anyone knew one! It was supposed to be God speaking through them and everyone accepted that it was all ok for people to just spurt out these random jumbled talkings. People would lift their hands up and mumble “Praise the Lord, thank you Jesus, praise you Jesus etc etc e…t … bloody c”, it makes me sick to the stomach to this day.
There was a stuck up daughter of a senior leadership family called Etoile and she kept uttering these random “Prophesies”, and each time she did everyone would start up with the old “Thank you Jesus, Amen, praise God, Amen” routine. I thought I’d have a crack and waited till there was a bit of a pause in the “Prophetic Utterings” and I called out “God is Love”, thinking I was pretty awesome but Dad told me to be quiet and no one else acknowledged what I’d said at all! I can only imagine how that poor Etoile girl managed to become so ‘upheld’ in the group but it is a bit concerning.
I was very happy to get out of that stupid meeting… it wasn’t the first and it wouldn’t be the last though as most of the communes would have an hour long one each morning just to really get off on the right foot!
The Long Road Part 5
The COG’s Version of Love
In simple terms, “God is Love, Love is shown with Sex, denying sex to someone means that you are denying them God’s love, you think you’re better than God, and will be punished”.
The whole thing was dreamed up by the leader, David Berg, as a means by which to serve his own desires and it’s consequences were devastating.
There is a Netflix Show called ‘Children of God’ and it’s an hour long run down of the account of one family in the group and it nearly word for word, backs up my story. There were always differences in circumstances but becasue everyone was following the same directions, many things were sadly the same.
There is also an amazing Documentary called “The Children of the Cult”, and it’s the best, most true to experience one out there. Unfortunately the Media often focuses on the most sensational parts of the story, but the story is devastating enough as it is without trying to make it so.
Hmmmmm
I’ve tried a few heading for this one but nothing really sticks. It’s just a shit topic but was a massive part of the terrible journey.
Under the guidance of the sick and perverted Leader of the COG, David Berg, everyone was sexualised no matter what age. He wrote in one of his letters that a girl will lubricate from the age of 2. That meant to him that she was ready. Sexual activity with Children under 12 was common, though it didn’t happen to everyone. Young girls were made to perform in sexualised videos of themselves dancing in sheer dresses to be sent to Berg. He wrote about the things he was doing to the kids around him.
As soon as you were 12 you were inducted into the ‘adult’ arena and would be made to join into the group activities with the rest of the adults but that didn’t stop things happening to kids much younger. It’s important to say here that there were many different experiences by many different kids and I have heard a lot of things from them both directly and indirectly. As with the violence, it just depended on who was in your area or ‘Home’. There were some predators that wreaked havoc everywhere they went but then other areas were milder because the people there were less driven by intent.
My experiences were many and varied and while some of them were imposed on me by older women, sadly, often we were kids just playing out what we were taught to do. There are things that I’ve done that I will never be able to clear from my mind and that I will never forgive myself for. Even though nothing was ever forced by me, the fact that they happened places a huge weight of guilt on my shoulders that no amount of practical justification can remove. That is how they turned the victims into perpetrators, blurred the lines and caused so much damage. It all came from the systematic abuse inflicted on children of all ages. I can not remember a time when I wasn’t acutely aware of sexuality or the act of sex. There was no innocence to be found in the COG. It was stripped away completely and thoroughly.
One time I was asked to show ‘God’s Love’ to a 7 year old girl when I was 10. Now I had to be careful because right down in my ‘ness’ I knew that it wasn’t right and that the girl didn’t know what was supposed to happen how how it was going to feel. I was put in a room by her parents to show her ‘God’s Love’ and I had to do just enough touching etc so that the girl didn’t tell her parents that I didn’t do it but not so much that it hurt her or crossed the lines of what I felt was wrong. I risked being punished for thinking I knew better than God by not showing his love to this girl… delicate lines to walk, but so were all the other lines.
In the same house I was in the shower and that same girls mother came in and took off all her clothes and jumped in with me. She would have been early 30’s and I was horrified. Remember that this woman could have just finished punishing you for something and then next minute she’s soaped up and rubbing herself all over you. I rinsed off and got out as quick as I could. Looking back I struggle in all these memories to relate to what a woman in her 30’s could find sexually attractive about a 10 yr old boy.
When we were at ‘The School’ which was just outside Lonavala between Puma and Bombay, there was a lot of activity. We did some school type lessons but the teachers weren’t real teachers. There was this plump guy early 30’s with tight black curly hair who would get this 12 yr old girl to rub his shoulders while we were all in the room trying to learn some spelling words. He’d push her against the wall and start rubbing her all over right in front of us all. It was horrific for her, while the rest of us were enraged at the powerlessness we felt. We wanted to jump up and bash him so bad and again, when you have to just sit and watch, the guilt of not doing something to save her just adds more to the load on our shoulders.
There was only 1 rule with the sexual activity between the kids and that was that a girl old enough to have a baby couldn’t do anything with a boy that could make her pregnant or it would bring too much attention to us. In the COG it wasn’t uncommon for girls still in their teens to have multiple children and not know who the fathers were.
‘Romantic Nights’
These were get togethers that were held between adults a lot more than they were held with the kids. All the Homes in an area would gather maybe once a month for an Adults session and all us kids would be sent to our rooms and the kids of the visiting families would be spread between all the bedrooms in the house. There could be 10 kids sleeping on the floor in each room in the house.
The Adults would do their thing and we would not want to bother them.
The kids romantic nights were less frequent because they had to be organised by the Adults. Girls would dress up in see through dresses and the boys in their best clothes out of the 4 outfits we owned each. They’d dim the lights and everything. At ‘The School’ I described earlier I went to bed with 2, 8 yr old girls when I was 8 myself because there were more girls than boys in the Home. We were too young to do anything and it was all a bit harmless when it was kids with kids but the intent was there.
I was put to bed with a 16 yr old girl when I was 9 and that plump, curly haired teacher I wrote about earlier came up to us and told me what to do to her and said she loved it. He made me sick. Anyway with us younger kids we would ask each other if we wanted to kiss before starting but with this older girl, she just started kissing me. I asked her why she didn’t ask first and her answer was, “Why, the adults don’t”. That conversation still saddens me to this day.
There were so many experiences that I couldn’t possibly write about them all and there were so many disturbing things that were common knowledge. One girl in particular was only 9 or 10 and it was known that she was sexually active and not by choice. A lot of it was chance with who was in the Homes and what your parents allowed to happen but also with such a sexually charged environment, the risk of abuse with no one knowing at all was very very high. Girls absolutely wore the worst of it and while we as young boys were exposed to things, and made to do things that were inappropriate, most of the damage was done to the girls and that breaks my heart.
All sex was unprotected and there were only a few reasons to not attend these ‘Romantic Nights’. If you were sick or in late pregnancy you could opt out but it was also used as a punishment for the Adults if they had not been following the rules or something. There were lots of kids who didn’t know who their Dad was and whole mixed bags of kids to the 1 Mum.
Any Husbands and Wives who acted jealously were lectured and labelled as selfish and shunned by the rest of the house and humiliated in front of the whole house at the morning ‘Prayer Meetings’.
Becoming an Adult
So I was the ripe old age of 11 and 1/4 and because I was coming up to being 12 and an ‘adult’, the indoctrination started. I’d be given hour long learning sessions by a woman who was not Mum to teach me what was expected of me.
I was not allowed to say “No” to anyone and had to both accept and give God’s Love to/from people I didn’t find attractive as well as the pretty ones. I was at down with Chapters of the ‘Mo Letters’ (these were the series of 20 odd thick books of writings, teachings and doctrines written by David Berg) that covered sex and the sharing of ‘God’s Love’ with everyone.
I was laying on the floor of our families bed room about to go to sleep when this very short, plump lady with pubic hair growing 1/2 way down the insides of her legs stood in the doorway to our family bedroom talking to Dad. They were talking about me getting close to being 12 and she said that she “Bagged me first”, she was laughing about it with Dad and he was saying, “down boy, down” as though I’d be really looking forward to it. That whole thought freaked me out and I couldn’t sleep that night because I was worried that was going to eventuate.
When the boys turned into teenagers, they were the most dangerous to the younger girls because they had drive, but were still immature, they were still 1/2 child and so would spend a lot of time with the kids but had been well and truly initiated into the sexual world. Unfortunately they were often the worst perpetrators to the younger girls and they would have been no older than 14 themselves. I still thank my lucky stars that my parents left when I was 11. Things could have got a whole lot worse and while it isn’t much in the grand scheme of things as there were so many lines crossed, I am so glad I never actually had sex with anyone, child or adult.
I’ve heard many stories over the years of things that happened to both boys and girls when they turned 12 but I’m keeping this as my story and not delivering second hand information in the attempt to keep this as clean and factual as possible. There was this one girl in our Home though who did turn 12 while we were there and she was asked in front of everyone in the house whether she was going to agree to join the Adults in the next ‘Romantic Night’, or leave the group. Of course we were in India with no way for her to go anywhere so Heads you lose, Tails they win.
Ain’t God’s Love grand?
Flowers In The Attic
I wrote this in 1992 while still living at home in Canberra reading the Book “Flowers in the Attic”. Some parts of that book absolutely destroyed me. It took me right back to some of the worst moments and how trapped I felt as a kid. When I wrote this I could barely see past my tears, it was full on. I don’t exactly recommend reading it or anything! Depends what you’re into.
“Like all the memories brought back at once, I fear and I regret the past and the present. For others as well as myself, I dred the future.
Pain, oh it stings, what did I do, not my fault yet I don’t escape without guilt. What was faith, hope and love to those parents who lost their children? All the time believing it was God’s fucking will!
Atrocities committed, the memory of which rips my heart from it’s place of rest. I was there too, I was lucky! How unjust are the courts that they make not a rule to outlaw such practices. The right to religious freedom, my fucking arse. Emotional involuntary scarifice. How we feared, how we longed, yet nothing seemed to save us. I gave comfort to my younger siblings as best I could. This comfort I greatly missed out on, what would I not have given. Perhaps this shows now, I love to be held and comforted like a baby.
Years lost though lessons learned, engraved deep on my mind. The pain mostly hidden until it rears it’s ugly head like it has now. There is no where to focus my anger as they were following their doctrine, motives pure. No where except at the author and leader of the group they call “The Family”, “The Children of God”.
How right you were when you said, that pain doesn’t pass with time! It’s as vivid now as it was the day these things happened.
I didn’t do anything wrong…. did I? Curse you for provoking such thoughts in my mind!”
This was following the COG home raids in Melbourne and Sydney in the early 90’s when police raided the homes and took all the kids out and questioned them. They weren’t ready for how well trained they would be at answering their questions. They wouldn’t admit a single thing, not even in court. The COG got good lawyers and pleaded ‘Religious Freedom’ and were granted compensation. They were even given govt grants. The kids were given activities to do like horse riding and other such things and then let back to their parents / homes. We had the police come over to our house before and during these times and ask us questions and what roles people played in the group. Because everyone’s names changed so often, it was hard to pin names and faces to times and actions so they all got off scott free. The ultimate slap in the face.
Those raids did end up changing the course the Group took from then. They issued a ‘Charter’ and many where allowed to leave if they chose. A small victory.
The Long Road Part 6
Random Memories
Random Memories of Australia and NZ
After the last few intense Chapters I figured I’d break it up a little bit with some random memories that still show how we lived…
When we lived in Gilgandra NSW, we were in a Farm house that had one of those old slaughter houses surrounded with fly screen out the back. Dad was shoveling sheep shit out from under the shearing shed and other odd jobs in exchange for us staying there. The Farmer gave us a sheep to eat but it was whole and I remember Dad and another man in the kitchen trying to cut this carcass up into cuts of meat to eat! They had no idea what they were doing and there was a lot of hacking and random chunks!!
I turned 5 in that house and it’s also where one of my sisters was born. I was going to Kindy and I’d have to walk down this big long driveway all on my own, past this old shed and then stand on the dirt road and wait for the School bus to come get me! There was this other farm boy who was at Kindy as well and I’d meet him at the road and he’d wait with me. He’d play ‘chicken’ with the cars that went past but here was no way I was doing that!!
There were two men that came to stay with us for a bit and they were travelling with a horse and cart but the cart needed fixing so Dad helped them with it. It would have been a slow old way to get around!
We got a heap of old laying hens that had stopped being productive and kept them for a while as they’d lay the odd egg but then when it seemed like one had stopped laying eggs, Dad would chop it’s head off and pluck it in the sink. When he was gutting one he found a whole heap of eggs ready to come out. It was obviously just having a break!!
The Farmer gave us a black sheep as well and we had it in the back yard tied up. I loved it and would trim it’s wool around it’s eyes and wash it with water. Because of the water and soap I was using on it, the poor thing got fly strike and needed to be treated… We have a pic of 3 of us kids sitting on it’s back!! One of the few pics we have of us as kids because the COG thought that photos were a security risk so many of them were destroyed when we were in India during one of the security blitzes!
We were forever changing schools and there was one I went to at the end of Kindy and we got a tour of the Year 1 room and I remember thinking, “This is nice, but I’ll never get to go here”! I was really good at making friends because I was always the new kid and I was never there long enough to get any Merit cards or anything except for this one time I was in yr 1 and I was standing in assembly and wasn’t listening for my name because it never happened but my little new mate pushed me and said “that’s you, that’s you!!!” I couldn’t believe it!
We traveled around in a Caravan for years and would stop next to creeks and stay there for weeks at a time. While we were next to one of these creeks Mum would wash the clothes in the water and we’d have baths in there as well. It would have been a sight for any passers by! We even had a Budgie in a cage at one point until a Butcher bird killed it through the bars…
Mum had to go to see her Mother because she was dying of cancer and she took the two youngest with her on the train leaving my brother and I with Dad. We were left with the task of house hunting in the country while she was away. We went through a gate and a young bull chased our car. I was looking out through the back window yelling, “Go faster! It’s catching us!”.
Because we didn’t have power a lot of the time we used candles and there were quite a few occasions of burnt hair and lost eye brows from kids (including myself) looking at the flames too closely!
We would drive for what seemed like an eternity with all us kids in the back seat. No seat belts in those days and I’d hang my head out the window and sing to myself for hours… Sometimes we even were put to bed in the caravan while it was being towed with strict instructions to not open the curtains when we were driving because we weren’t supposed to be in there! I’d watch the cars banking up behind us through the curtains!
We’d drive through towns at night sometimes and I remember waking up and looking out of the car window and seeing night life and people out in the streets.
There was one farm house we stayed in with some other COG families and one of the men had a gun and they’d go shooting kangaroos for us to eat. I remember not having any money because Mum went shopping in town and came back with some pumpkins and rice so we ate pumpkin, Kangaroo meat and rice for two months! Mum would dry the Pumpkin seeds out in the blazing Aussie sun and eat them.
One night at that house I was busting for a pee so bad but I could feel the whole caravan rocking. I looked outside and there was this massive Brahman Bull scratching itself on the tow hitch of the caravan. I had to stand at the door and pee from the step!!!
In the same house we ended up with a baby kangaroo in our yard as it was in the pouch of one of the kangaroo’s they’d shot to eat and it would play with us in the yard and one time latched onto my brothers willie thinking it was a teat while we played nude in the yard with a sprinkler!!
In NZ I remember Dad jumping a fence and stealing apples from an orchard because we needed food! We lived in a tent for a while there as well and it was always raining in NZ… I really don’t know how they did it or what they were thinking to be honest! Crazy times!
Random Indian Memories
We were in India between 1983 and 1987
We went swimming in a river in India at one point and it seemed pretty gross to me because of the poverty, Indians will shit all along the side of the rivers and wash their bums with a little can of water. We were with this other Indian man who then told us that it was a Holy River and they would push their dead out into the river as well because the poor people couldn’t afford enough fire wood for the traditional burning. Mum got us straight out as soon as she heard that!
We were in a Rickshaw one time and I looked out the back window checking to see if we were being followed and I saw all our stuff had fallen out the back window and was all over the road. A crowd of people had gathered over our stuff straight away and they were grabbing it and fighting over it! Mum screamed at the taxi to stop and got out and was running back down the road yelling at everyone to get away from our stuff!!! It’s funny that even though we were poor, we were never even close to how poor other Indians were.
Because we were white, everywhere we went there would be crowd of people following us. They would touch our skin and squeeze our cheeks and it got pretty intense sometimes and Mum and Dad had to shoo them away but that only made them stand back a bit. It was not uncommon for there to be 50 odd people standing in a circle all around us, just watching us have a picnic.
We got invited to weddings just because we were white which was cool because we could eat as much as we wanted! I loved the Indian Chicken Buriani!
Indians used to fly a lot of kites and they were very cheap to buy. They would have a kite festival at a certain time of the year. They had this special glass coating over the kite string and they would fly their kite over to yours and cut the string and then run and get your kite! Full on kite wars!
We all had to stay inside for the paint festival because they would make a bee line for us being white and all and try and cover us all with paint!
Monkeys!!! There were massive Languor Monkeys that would grow to the size of a grown man and there would be groups of them 30 odd strong. They would belt across the rooves of houses, over fences and down streets, grabbing anything they could. We would keep a look out for them and if you saw one, you would call out “Monkeys” at the top of your lungs and everyone would scramble to get inside or close the doors etc. They were scary with massive teeth.
We were all sitting on the second level of a house having lunch with the usual lentils and rice with chapatis and a monkey jumped onto the window sill, reached in and grabbed a chapati out of one of the kids hands and then jumped away again!
Mum was outside having a cup of tea once and some leaves were landing on her and in her tea, she looked up to see this massive Monkey snarling at her, throwing leaves out of the gutter onto her!
Food
Because we lived in group houses in India, we needed a lot of food but we had so little money. We’d eat lentils and rice for lunch and dinner without much flavour. India isn’t really known for bread as such but we’d have chapatis with the lentils.
We only had powdered milk and for breakfast we’d eat either boiled Whole Wheat, Cracked Wheat, or Suji. Whole wheat was the whole wheat grains, Cracked wheat was the whole grains put through a stone mill (often drawn by a cow) once. Suji was the cracked wheat put through the mill again and then wholemeal flour was the Suji put through the mill again! Suji was disgusting and gluggy and set like jelly. We would sweeten it with Juggary which you would buy in big blocks and then melt down in a saucepan. Very unique flavour indeed.
My 10th birthday cake was in the shape of a guitar which was cool but it was made of set Suji, which was not cool!!!
Any meat you ate had to be bought from the Muslim side of town and if you lived in the Hindu areas you’d have to cover the bucket of meat with a cloth and smuggle it back home! It had to be boiled to kill all the bugs so meat was usually flavorless with hard fat veins through it… I don’t remember many good tasty meals as a kid unless we managed to eat from a street stall or something!
You couldn’t eat the ice creams as they were made from Buffalo milk mixed with water that would make you sick. I got Hepatitis A from water that hadn’t been treated properly. We were always getting Amoebas which gave you dissentry, we all got Scabies once and a couple of us got Dengi Fever… and that is even after being very careful.
We rarely had peanut butter and it was a massive treat if we did. It came in vacuum sealed plastic bags and the parents would ‘thin’ it out by adding it to mashed bananas! There wasn’t any butter, ever!
When we came back to Australia we stayed with my Auntie in Sydney for a little bit and we thought it was so awesome to be able to have butter, peanut butter, AND jam all on the same sandwich if we wanted to!!! It felt like heaven!
Music
I was taught to play my first 3 chords on guitar when I was 7 by a 14 yr old Indian boy called Patrick. Patrick had a wonky eye from getting hit with welding sparks when working in a child labor factory. I loved to play the guitar because it was learning something! I learned song after song by reading the chord diagrams and was self taught from those first three chords!
I could then lead the busking and with me on the guitar, the oldest 4 kids and I sang in front of 8000 girls at a girls school. We played at a revolving restaurant in Puna and for the Prince and Princess of Bohpal! They gave us toy guns that shot out plastic bullets but they were taken away from us as soon as we left their place.
In the COG if you were good at anything you must be channeling something or someone and everyone said there was a musical spirit that was speaking through me. Now I didn’t care what they said about that, I just loved to sing and play. Unfortunately they were all COG songs like “Watch out for 666”!!! (Insert laughing emoji here!)
Before we went to India we knew this travelling musical family in the COG (they kept their association quiet because they were a bit famous and didn’t want to tarnish their name) their family was travelling through Australia in a big Bus which looked quite fancy to me. It was all black with their names on the outside. I got all inspired by the boy who was maybe 2 years older than me so 8 or 9 perhaps. His Dad would play the guitar and he would sing, they were on the TV too! One time when we were busking and the little kids got tired, Dad got just me to sing on my own with him playing a more up beat song and we drew quite a crowd!! But I guess a 6 or 7 year old belting out a song at the top of his lungs would be worth stopping to listen to!!!
When I was 14 and out of the group back in Australia, I bought my first guitar from an Ex COG member who was stuck just Nth of Canberra with a blown tire. It was about 20 yrs old already and had the head of it bolted back on as it had broken by falling off the top bunk of an Indian Train. I still use this as my main guitar now. Currently, it’s 52 yrs old! The head is still hanging in there, bolts and all!
Riots
During the time we lived in India there were a lot of riots and some of them were very serious. We lived there at the time when Indira Gandhi was assassinated and that started a riot that lasted for 6 weeks where hundreds of people died.
As luck would have it, Mum had to give birth to the 7th child in our family during those riots and Dad took her to the hospital in a Rickshaw and when they got there Mum had to yell at the Sikhs that were held up in the hospital to let her in!!
Because we were in the COG anyway and thought the end of the world could happen at any time, we always had a stash of food. At any one time we had enough food stashed to last the whole house for 4 to 6 weeks. Not great food mind, lots of cans and rice! What it meant was that when new food was bought, you’d often have to use the older stashed food up and store the new stuff!
The Indira Riots were bad though and our little Indian mate went out and bought a whole heap of cigarettes as they were starting. All the shops would board up and there would be things burning all over the place! Anyway, he would then take the cigarettes and swap them for food by going into the back behind shops or by knowing where the shop owners lived etc. Crazy times!
We could be stuck inside the house for weeks due to the riots and they were usually between the Hindus and the Muslims but could also be with any of the other factions living there. It was a very tense period of Indian history with Independence from the Commonwealth as well all around that time.
Indian Generosity
For the most part Indians were very generous and would share with you what they could.
We went out into a little farm village to meet some sort of preacher dude who’d set up a church out there and we were going to sing for them. When we arrived on the bus, the village boys met us there with Ox and cart to bring our stuff to the village.
They were all living in huts with walls made of cow dung and mud with roves of reeds. They made batches of Mutton Curry and when you’d finished your bowl (which was a struggle because it was so spicy) they would keep putting more in it. We’d be covering the bowl with our hands saying “no more, no more”, while wobbling our heads like crazy in the Indian way but they would just put it on top of your hands! At that Village I remember it was when Halley’s Comet was flying over and because it was so dark out in the country side we could see it really well. That would have been in 1986 according to Google!
We went to a lot of people’s houses when we were witnessing to them or trying to get them to donate money to us for our “Work with Schools” and we were always fed very well there!
