By Parasuram das
The following video took place in Nairobi during the mid 90s. Tribhuvanath prabhu and his team were putting on dozens of festivals in East Africa. This particular one took place in Nairobi’s biggest slum. In America the devotees had the association of the great preacher H.H. Visnujan Swami, in Europe we had Tribhuvanath prabhu. He was a fearless preacher, who had been given a direct order from Srila Prabhupada to organise festivals.
Africa is not an easy place, even at this festival anything could go wrong. people in this slum were desperate. In fact after the kirtan,we were packing up, prasad was being distributed, kitchari in plastic bags and the hungry people were eager to get some.Some community devotees, without any social skills, decided not to distribute the little cartons of milk, and the people got angry,the next thing we were driving out under a shower of rocks. The day after this festival the bus broke down in the middle of nowhere. The local people were planning to get a big gang together and rob us during the night, and when I say rob, it could mean that we all get murdered and then robbed. We managed to borrow a van to get us out of there.
I met Tribhuvanath prabhu in Dar Salam, Tanzania. He was on his own, trying to scrape some Laxmi together for the festivals. Within minutes we were on Harinam dancing with Masai warriors. These Harinams went on for 3 days, we spent the nights in the cheapest African “dharmshalla” you could imagine and for prasad,well, we hit up a random pious Indian family and Bingo!
Tribhuvanath prabhu’s puspa samadi is located on Govardhana Hill between Kusum Sarova and Goverdan town. It is the only Samadi in English.