The land has views of Mt Meru (above) - Africa's 5th highest mountain 
The land is currently a banana, maize and bean subsistence 'shamba' (farm) 
The land is lush and green, with over 100 trees on it
We have also bought the existing house which is on the land - this will be used as a building store/for locking building supplies in, and we may eventually turn it into a lock-up garage or outside store
Village leaders from the local village which or land falls under, signing the Land Sale Agreement at the village officeSorry I haven’t been around much lately – but here, at long last, is a post to let you all know what I’ve been up to !
I mentioned earlier this year that there would be some changes on the horizon for our family in the near future – well, I can now tell you that after about a year of planning & negotiating (things are rarely ‘smooth sailing’ here in Africa !) we have finally managed to buy 2 acres of magnificent Tanzanian land overlooking a National Park (and close to the base of Africa’s 5th highest mountain – Mt Meru) where we will start to build a home early in 2011 (as the seller will vacate the land in December this year).
The land is next door to two of our oldest and dearest friends who we have known since we moved to Tanzania in 1998, and is a mere 20 – 30 minutes from our daughter’s school – and around 1 ½ hours from the farm (& ½ hour from the city) so the plan is that we will build a home and move there towards the end of next year, so that we can be close to the school and so that our daughter (and son, as he will start nursery school in a couple of years time !) can attend it daily.
We will still keep a home base here on the farm (my husband will commute daily between our new home/farm/city office) & will come out here to stay over school holiday’s, weekends etc so it’s not going to be too sad (hopefully !) the day we finally make the move. (This being Africa, anything could happen and we could move sooner or later than the end of 2011 – so watch this space !)
I am going to be devastated to leave the farm as a permanent home base (but as hubby says, ‘Just wait until you see your own house being built, then you’ll be really excited to move !) as I love, love, love it here and if it were not for the children I would never ever want to leave (and I can tell you that I have had a love/hate relationship with the farm and that it took me many years to feel this way – when our daughter was still very young I was very unhappy here & wanted to move, but for the past several years I have been very happy & content here !) But as a parent, we all know that you make sacrifices for your children and as I do not want to send our children away to boarding school, we feel that this will be the best move for our family.
So, we have been going for endless meetings with village heads, officials and lawyers, land surveyors etc and it has all been quite exhausting with endless paperwork in order to have everything legally done, and countless trips in & out of the city which is what has been taking me away from the farm & blogging lately !
I’ve included a few photos of our land in this post for you to see – it is currently a bean, maize and banana ‘shamba’ (farm) - our friends (neighbours) have game such as elephant and hippo coming on to their land and what is really great is that the subsistence farmers who owned this land were having so much trouble with wild animals coming in & eating their crops that they were only too happy to sell, were paid very well for their land and this has enabled them to move further ‘inland’ and buy land were wild animals are no longer a threat to their crops/livelihood, so it is a win-win situation all round. There are quite a few people buying land in this particular area now, and restoring it to natural, indigenous bush & encouraging the game and birdlife back (which is what we also plan to do), which is wonderful.
I have also been keeping very busy with my Guest Cottage venture these past few weeks - and have had lots of guests in and out ! Many people have asked me what I will do about this once we move off the farm – well, a year is a long time and anything could happen in that time, but the idea is that I will still handle all the bookings/marketing etc from where we live and I will employ a good local person as a caretaker to oversee it for me in my absence (meeting & greeting people etc), and of course we will still be coming out to the farm over the odd weekend/holiday so I will still be able to keep an eye on things.
So, that’s what I’ve been up to lately ! I have also decided to only update the blog weekly (once or twice a week) for the time being, as I try to get on top of things going on in 'real' life. I also hope to find time this week to start visiting/commenting on everyone else’s blogs, too – and tackle my overflowing ‘Inbox’ aswell ! Thanks everyone, for keeping in touch – and I hope to be back in the blogosphere more often soon …..
