My grandfather on my dad's side was one of 11 siblings, and the only one to leave South Africa. Since, of course, many of the younger generations have left, for Australia and New Zealand, for Dubai and Saudi Arabia, for England, for Canada, for the United States; but for the most part, there is a whole branch of the family still resident in South Africa. My father's parents died long before I was born, so I had little connection to, or knowledge of, this part of my heritage.
It is a rite of passage for us melting-pot Americans to go off in search of our roots. More than an excuse to travel, more than a unique opportunity for an inside look at a foreign culture, I hoped to find, in that stereotypical questing way, some reflection of myself among these distant cousins. After all, I don't look much like either of my parents. I'm the starched-collar goy among my mom's family, and too liberal and open-minded for my dad's conservative Christian relatives. Everyone on all sides collectively gasped when I abandoned a safe and lucrative intellectual life to (consecutively) scoop ice cream, live on a farm, work in a small-town dental office, and eventually join the military. Pacifists on one side and anarchists on the other, nobody quite knew what to make of me swearing to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Why wasn't I teaching, going to grad school, studying law or medicine, pursuing a musical career, living in the city, dating a suit, settled down and busy raising rugrats?
I hoped rather fleetingly that perhaps I'd find some actual relations, some resemblances, on this trip. And I was not disappointed, though the source took me by surprise. The second- and third- and once-removed cousins I discovered across the country were all incredibly warm, welcoming, and refreshingly full of stories of my grandfather and grandmother; but the best story I heard was that of my great-great-great grandfather, one of the 1820 British settlers sent to South Africa to establish a human barrier between the British and the native black population (rather peeved about their land being stolen away).
Thomas, my great3 grandfather, was what you might call a rogue. Growing up, he lived with a wealthy merchant family in London, but for unknown reasons, out of the blue he enlisted in England's Merchant Navy. After a few Napoleonic sea battles, he was captured by the French, perhaps even fought back against the English on a captured English ship, languished several years in a French prison, got in with the Freemasons, then successfully leveraged his Masonic connections to escape France - one of just a handful of English POWs who did so. Returning to England, my illustrious ancestor found he wasn't too popular, so after futzing around a bit (and fathering an illegitimate child), he signed up for the dubious 1820 excursion with his wife and three young children. Against all odds, he scratched out a decent farmer's life amid the chaos and privations of white South Africa, frequently haggling with the government for damage and loss reimbursement from the "frontier wars" against the various black tribes. In his later years, though, he spent most of his days chasing after a married-but-separated woman (helping raise her kids) and getting "stupid drunk", perhaps as a way to cope with having to be taken in and supported by his least favorite son, who despised him. Restless, even in his retirement he tutored children, mended shoes, and kept a daily diary, peppered with odd recipes and remedies and regular weather observations ("It was windy." "It was windy." "Today it was windy.") For decades, landlocked far inland, this illustrious forebear kept among his small library a number of books on navigation and seamanship, deeply prized and sorely missed when they burned along with his farm during one of the frontier wars.Some of my ancestor's colorful nature must have trickled down the bloodline, I suspect.
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