Logistics of a Dream

Morgan Bay

Last week I had, thanks to my hubby and hard work, one of my childhood dreams come true. We purchased a plot in a little village in the Eastern Cape called Morgan Bay. I have written about the spot before because it is somewhere very close to my heart, the very first time I visited Morgs I was all of one month old and I spent nearly every Easter and Christmas holiday there until I left home for university. So when the opportunity to actually have a spot of my own, it was something that we jumped on. In fairness, even though most of family have houses there or a place to stay there, the houses belong to our grandparents, parents or cousins and as it often does when one goes with joint family houses, when it comes to inheritance things can get very messy.

I have always found that the death of a family member, especially if that member is the Matriarch, and there is an inheritance to split, like a house, the complication behind this can stretch for years and sour relationships for generations. Im not making assumptions here, this is something that I have witnessed happen on many occasions and I don’t think that it is a generational issue, it will effect the generations to come because is inherently human nature to fight for what they believe is theirs. Often they are blinded by grief or even greed but this is the reality of having to share.

While we have had the opportunity to invest into the main family house over the years and I was very excited about doing that it bought alone with it the stark reality that one day should our matriarch pass on then we have a house that needs to be split between four families. In the grand scheme of things there are many families that can handle a situation like this seamlessly but why leave that up to chance or the whim of fickle human nature.

So keeping this in mind we set about the process of finding a plot that suited our needs, one of the main requirements was that the plot needed to be close to the family house so that we weren’t on the other side of the valley and needed to get into a vehicle to see them because that would defy the point of being together on holiday. So off my mom in law and I went traipsing around the village to see what was available and to be honest, although there were great plots waiting to be bought, there weren’t any that caught my fancy, either because they were to small or far away or expenive. In the absence of what we were looking for, we considered alternatives but those also eventually fell away.

We had searched through most of the available plots by now but we have overlooked the obvious choices, just next to my Gran’s house there was a newer development of land but we had not gone to see the plots on offer there because we knew that they were very expensive, and why wouldn’t they be? It was prime property! But I had also failed to take in to account the depressed property market in that particular area. So we went to take a look, found a plot we loved and gambled on our sale offer thinking that it would not be accepted and to our surprise it was. The first feeling that I got was total surprise and excitement at the same time. Then the nerves kicked in because by this point I was back in Dubai and I needed to managed the process remotely, thankfully my hubby had a better suggestion and we handed the matter over to our RSA lawyers to handle and all I needed to do was sign the documents.  Papers are signed and now the real logistics need to start because we now want to start designing our house.

Finding an architect that doesn’t think we are made of money because we live in Dubai has been quite a challenge and it is still on going. Sometimes I think that I am a sucker for punishment but it has been an eye opening experience and what I have learnt from it is that not everything is as it seems and it is good to gamble once in a while on things that matter the most to you because the reward might just make one of your dreams come true!