Hi, my name is Maliga Govender and this is my story.

I was born in January 1939 in Sydenham, Durban. When I was eight, my parents were divorced. My father took us to live with his sister in Overport.

I got married when I was fifteen and moved to Inanda. I had six children – five boys and a girl. We then moved to La Mercy.

Some of us senior ladies got together and had Thevaram classes. At that time there were many people drowning nearby, so we decided to do Amen prayers.

We ladies got together and went house-to-house collecting things like spices, cooking items and some cash. La Mercy had no prayer of this kind before. We had our first prayer in June 1992. The prayer has since grown bigger and bigger, and is still carrying on to this day.

When my husband died, I moved to Sea-Tides, Desainagar. Here too we started Thevaram classes. One day, Mrs Pillay’s daughter phoned the wrong number by chance, and we got talking. She invited me to come to their house on Thursdays for Sai Baba’s service.

One day I said to Mrs Pillay that I had a wish to do Amen prayers at the beach. She said: “Come, let’s get together and each of us make and cook something and go to the beach and pray.” We sat on mats on the grass. We had no tent – just open air. There was no music, so we clapped hands and sang Hindi, Tamil and Telegu songs.

Everybody was so happy. The prayer is still carrying on in the school grounds to this day. It grows bigger and better every year. Now the community gets together once a year through the Amen prayer in both La Mercy and Sea-Tides.