sunday post : VALUABLE

I copied this from Jakesprinter:

Precious, expensive, costly, priceless, important, dear having considerable monetary worth, costing or bringing a high price like a valuable painting, a valuable crop having qualities worthy of respect, admiration, or esteem: a valuable friend. or considerable use, service, or importance: valuable information. these are a few words how to define Valuable.

I experienced some very precious moments a few weeks ago on visiting the city Gent in Belgium.

A big part of the South-African population has ancestors from Europe.  The Dutch once governed over the Cape of Good Hope with a halfway station to the Far East situated there. There was the arrival of the French Huguenots and later under British ruling a group of British Settlers also arrived in this distant part of Africa. There are a huge variety surnames from different countries,  German, Portuguese, Greek,  French, English, Scottish  etc.

Unfortunately those people did not keep proper tract of our heritage, specially if you were of little importance. One of the few references I could get of my ancestors with my maiden name was the following:

They departed from Gent as  “domestiques” in the party of an affluent  gentleman named Jacques de Savoye on the 29^th of January 1688 on the ship Oosterlandt and reached their destination on the 25^th of April 1688.

That morning when I wandered through the historic part of Gent and realised that their feet might have fell on same places as mine, it became a very precious moment to me.