When working on the UNESCO Slave Route project in the early 2000s, Dr Botlhale Tema discovered the extraordinary fact that her highly educated family from the farm Welgeval in the Pilanesberg had originated with two young men who had been child slaves in the mid-nineteenth century. She pieced together the fragments of information from relatives and members of the community and scoured the archives to produce this book. Her book, Land of My Ancestors, previously published as The People of Welgeval, tells the story of the two young men and their descendants, as they build a life for themselves on Welgeval. In this week’s edition of the “Culture Corner”, we speak to Dr Tema about the importance of tracing your genealogy and family history, discovering family traits and putting them in perspective.