The Atlantic Ocean is separated from the Indian Ocean by the Cape peninsula. The fairest Cape, the Cape of Storms – the Cape where I had a garden in a village called Kommetjie, on the Atlantic side. During the 90’s, on this tip of Africa, I spent my four months of shore leave each year – gardening. The Kommetjie Environmental Awareness Group (KEAG) advertised a gardening course and I attended. It was a course in ‘Organic Gardening’. In 1994, in a class room at Fish Hoek High School, I was introduced to the concept of earthworms and how they condition the soil. My life changed direction. Right then I wanted to become a farmer but could not leave the sea – I loved it, had been on it for eight years already. And then the miracle happened.
Later that same year, while South Africa was celebrating the result of her first democratic election, I was on a cargo ship in Vancouver, Canada, loading thousands of tonnes of temperate rainforest products. The ship was on charter to a European company and the cargo was destined for Sete, in France. I did not know much about the environment, had only just recently been introduced to earthworms, but what we were doing – loading the ship with freshly milled lumber – did not feel right.
I went ashore in Vancouver in search of an environmental group, to ask a few questions. I found an environmental group. It was called Greenpeace.
