Fadeela won’t stop in her quest to travel
“I never ran in my life and even faked a sprained ankle to get out of running at school.”
A pharmacist in Standerton with a love for travelling, Halaal-food from her mother’s kitchen and a zest for life, has clocked 83 parkruns to date and there is no knowing when she will stop.
Case in point is a recent visit to Vietnam for Fadeela Omar with husband Yunus, where the itinerary was adjusted to coincide with an incoming flight to Kuala Lumpur for a parkrun, and an outgoing flight from Singapore, again to do a parkrun.
Other destinations were Turkey, Bosnia, Croatia, Thailand, India and closer to home on the African continent, visits to Namibia, Swaziland and Mozambique are included as well as pilgrimages to Mecca.
This committed Muslim hails from the big city Johannesburg, where her mother still lives.
Her B.Pharm was done at the University of the Witwatersrand and she married while completing her internship at Baragwanath Hospital.
The internship was valuable since graduates were rotated to different clinical departments.
She settled in town at the beginning of her community service year and now occupies a managerial position at the Standerton Hospital.
Fadeela voiced the opinion that not many Muslim, Indian women will be found in robust exercise environments, though she somewhat had a paradigm shift.
“I never ran in my life and even faked a sprained ankle to get out of running at school.”
She comes from a relatively conservative community where emphasis was placed on academics, but her father was the sportsman in the family and encouraged his daughters to participate in the occasional community fun run.
A colleague, Mr Charles Skinner, mentioned the parkrun in 2016 and said his children, who were forbidden Coke at home, gladly participated in road races in anticipation of the water and Coke at the finish line.
Another friend, Dr Ayesha Bibi Khan, mentioned the parkrun as well and in December 2016 her curiosity got the better of her and the rest is history.
At first, her sole intention was to be part of the team which brought parkrun to her ‘dorpie’.
Standerton’s parkrun was established in March last year.
She is the regional parkrun ambassador in Mpumalanga, excluding the Lowveld, and meetings are conducted via Google Meet.
Her passion for parkrun takes her afar to help in establishing new parkruns and support ongoing events and she has helped to establish parkruns in Vrede, Ermelo, Mkhondo (Piet Retief) and Delmas.
The parkrun culture allows for many different running challenges nationwide and she recently joined the parkrun world tourist group.
“You plan your Saturday according to where you are going to run,”
“You soon see familiar faces at other parkruns and become fast friends.
“You make arrangements to meet at future events, meet their significant ones and ‘kuier’.
Fadeela has also completed the Loskop Wild Challenge twice.
“I never would have found myself at the finish line of the Loskop challenge, bawling my eyes out, if it wasn’t for the parkrun,” she concluded.
