Cecil John Rhodes pioneered and established Rhodesia in 1890. The British colonial state where my Great Grandmother was born. 90 years later the British colony became the independent state of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers. It is bordered by Zambia, South Africa, Botswana and Mozambique. The capital and largest city is Harare. A country of roughly 14 million people.

All of my blogs are based on different aspects of Zimbabwe and my life in Zimbabwe where my parents returned to live and farm in 1993. My father was born and schooled in Rhodesia. My grandfather, Jeremy Pickering was born in Rhodesia, and my grandmother, Sheila Pickering (nee MacDonald) born in the Isle of Cull, Scotland and arrived in 1958 and was posted to Gatooma Hospital in the Midlands province as a Nursing Sister. This is where she met my grandfather who farmed on the family farm, Martin Spur, Gatooma, together with my great grandparents George & Molly Pickering,

On the return of my parents, Frances and Charles and my two brothers, Jeremy and Alastair, to Zimbabwe in 1993 to a farm belonging to my grandfather’s best friend, Mike Soffe, in the Barrick district in Mashonaland Central, life seemed like bliss after their hectic lives of the UK. They were based on a beautiful farm overlooking the Great Dyke. My mother took some time off work to look after my two young brothers who were very naughty and loved the new-found freedom of Africa. She tried in vain to get them to play with the nice paints and playdough she had bought from England but all they were interested in doing was picking up sticks to become their latest fighting weapon and making massive mud baths with the hosepipe.

They moved to a farm called Grasmere in Norton, in Mashonaland South West in 1995 to lease a farm where they had a 250 sow unit Piggery, maize and cattle. It was here that I was born in 1997 and where my deep love for Zimbabwe commenced.

When I look back I had a very privileged upbringing. Growing up on a farm, learning to walk barefoot in the ‘dugga’ (mud), driving with my father around the farm on his motorbike, learning to swim almost as soon I could walk, spending lots of time at the ‘country club’ with our friends, where our parents would go to play golf and tennis and a social after, going camping and fishing on the Zambezi. Such a carefree childhood or that’s how I saw it through little eyes. Perhaps the saddest thing was having to go boarding school at the age of 5 as we were far from any schools. Even this had a silver lining as I met some of my best friends even till this day. We were all in the same boat and we became a family at Ruzawi Preparatory School in Marondera – the same school that my father and grandfather and brothers had attended. By the time I went to Senior School, my parents had moved to Harare and I attended a day scholar school.

However, looking back, it wasn’t as idyllic as I thought. My parents certainly did an amazing job of protecting us children from some of the more difficult times. What is for me truly remarkable is the fact that people in Zimbabwe are very resilient and there is a saying that ‘we make a plan’. I think the stories shown in the blogs demonstrate how Zimbabwean people continue to make a plan, even though many of them lost everything during the land invasions and then again during hyperinflation