Dina was born Dina Abramowitz in Vereenging, South Africa and grew up in the small village of Viljoens-drif in South Africa. Her family ran a shop and her father David Meir was a butcher, a shochet, a skill he had learned from his father, Moshe Yitzchak in his hometown of Kupiskis, Lithuania. Her mother Eda spoke 7 languages and had been highly educated in Liepaja, Latvia. Dina was the only Jew in her school and the surrounding area of desolate "veld" and was teased and bullied at school becuase of this. She used to tell us how the children chased her with caterpillars, and she remained afraid of them throughout her life. She was a lonely child and had memories of waiting at the school gates as her parents were often late to fetch her. Dina found company and solace in books. She was a quiet and shy and if ever invited to a birthday party she would lock herself in the bathroom and read a book. She helped out in the shop from a young age and at one time, when she was a young child her house burned down and she had memories of being trapped in the flames before being rescued. Later her family moved to Vereenging, a larger town south west of Johannesburg where the house had orchards at the back and a beautiful front yard with gardenia trees, a scent that always reminded her of her home. The house was a bungalow and had a tiled stoep (porch) and a statue of a little girl and a frog in the front. Dina spent a lot of time with Elizabeth, the 'maid' who was also her nanny and became a part of the family. When she was 8 years old her brother Morris Henry (Maishe) was born. Being the son of the family he was greeted with a lot of attention. Sadly he only lived to the age of 23, and died of a bee sting when Dina had already left South Africa and was living in London around 1972. Dina learned to play the accordion as a child and also went to Hebrew classes twice a week. She adored her father, who she described as a quiet, thoughtful, spiritual man and was devastated by his death, aged only 54 in the mid-60s. She was in Israel at the time & was called back but too late to see him before he died. She always felt death was covered up and not communicated about in her family. She would say, when her brother and father died her mother just shut the door of their rooms in the house and never opened them again. Dina never felt she fitted into the small village lifestyle and found it stifling. She would make her own mini dresses, copying designs, like Mary Quant, from magazines. She said she refused to wear a twinset and pearls and dress like her mother like the other girls did. After studying at the Rabbi Yehuda Leib Zlotnik Hebrew Seminary her Hebrew and teaching skills were excellent and she taught in schools such as King David school and even made a Hebrew teaching record. She also completed a degree in English literature by correspondence at the university of South Africa for which she received a distinction and many will remember her love for classical poetry, William Blake and anything by Jane Austen. However, her modern secular ways put her in conflict with her parents and she wanted to see and experience the world. She decided to go travelling.