Google Earth

I've finally caught up to the Jones's and downloaded Google Earth.

And I can see my grandparent's farm from there!

It's just outside Pretoria. It's bordered by the two ribbons of green (small river near the top, and big one just making the corner near the bottom) that you can see in the pic, as well as the road through the middle of the screen diagonally (the neighbour possesses the barren-earth roads and large buildings that show up clearly). It's not huge - I can walk the entire perimiter, including some bundu-bashing in the thorny thickets - in about an hour. But it's the Family Farm. It was tradition growing up that we'd head down from Zimbabwe for Christmas each year, and my son and I have managed to spend a Christmas there too.

It may not be much, but it's a place we love. However, my grandfather has noticed the lights of Pretoria steadily marching his direction. Rich man's squatter camps he calls them - those security villages springing up across the land, with houses chok-a-block on top of each other. He reckons he might sell up and move...

I really, really hope he doesn't! It's a place I love to visit, and the only Family Farm our branch of the tree has.

0 comments: