Very soon after gold was discovered in Johannesburg in 1886, my ancestors pitched up there. They never found gold, but they made a living in ancillary services. The Boer war did cause some havoc: the British locked up one of my great-grandfathers as a Boer spy, and sent another to a prison camp in Ceylon, where he spent much of the war playing chess while dodging tropical diseases. Mostly, though, the family found South Africa a comfortable place to be white.
1886年,在約翰尼斯堡發現黃金後不久,我的祖先就奔赴那裏。他們一直沒有找到黃金,但依靠提供輔助服務來謀生。布爾戰爭(Boer war)確實給他們帶來一些厄運:英國人把我的一位曾祖當成布爾間諜關押起來,還把另一位曾祖送往位於錫蘭的戰俘集中營,他在那裏度過戰爭的大部分時間,一邊下棋一邊與熱帶病作鬥爭。不過,對於家族中的大部分人而言,作爲白人,在南非的生活還是十分愜意的。