This is my first 'blog' and I'm a little nervous,so if you guy's think i'm boring, be gentle with me.I have been wondering what to write about since I signed up a few months ago and just decided that I would write whatever was on my mind at any given moment, so here goes.

I have been researching my family tree and have been so ingrossed in the process. I have managed to trace my family back to 1771.

It all started when I was going through a very messy divorce back in 2006. To get out of the house at the weekends, I would go and visit my Aunty Joan who was 90 at the time. She is still alive today at the ripe old age of 96 and has the prestige of sharing her birthday with our first black president Nelson Mandela. She still has all her witts about her and has a memory like an elephant! However, I digress.

Aunty Joan is the last living family member of her generation and as I had always loved history, I decided to see what she could tell me about our family. This is what started me on my quest and I was absolutely astounded at her recall of the past. She was able to relate antidotes about the family that no amount of research would be able to uncover. She told me about her grandmothers brother, William Colling who was shot in the arm during the Matabele Rebellion in Rhodesia and who had to have his arm amputated at the elbow and in her true dry sense of humour, she added 'William wasn't very fond of blacks after that'.

She also told me about her Uncle Freddie, who as a child, was asked by their church minister 'if he had found the Lord'. He answered 'I didn't know he was missing'

These are the sort of story's one can't find in family records of birth certificates and death certificates but are stories that are passed down from generation to generation only if one is prepared to take the time and listen.

I was born and bred in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and imigrated to South Africa in 1982. In my research I discovered that my great, great, great grandfather came to South Africa with the 1820 settlers as part of a resettlement program the British government had augustrated to colonize the Cape colony. It has been quite a difficult thing to research because they were'nt very good at keeping records and most of the birth and deaths were recorded by the family's local parish and later by the Dutch Reformed church. A lot of the birth dates vary by one or two years and so its extreemly difficult to establish the exact date of birth.

Well, I think I have bored you enough and so will say bye for now and remember.....be kind.