家乡花园尽头的宝藏

在津巴布韦我家花园的尽头，有一条长长的隧道，它成了我和孩子们玩耍的天堂。或许，我没有以前同事和朋友们享有的繁华和舒适，但却拥有她们体验不到的别样人生。

“Can we go to the tunnel, Mum?”

I close my laptop[1] with a sigh. In the kitchen, I collect the things two small boys will need for a picnic: a flask of homemade lemonade, the remains of a packet of ginger cookies.[2]

Sam and I found the tunnel soon after we moved to our red-roofed cottage in eastern Zimbabwe[3]. Half-hidden in the bushy scrapland at the bottom of the garden, it’s a five-yard-long pipe that’s wide enough for an adult to shimmy his way through.[4] At the height of Zimbabwe’s rainy season, a trickle[5] of water flows through it. In the dry April-August months, the pipe is empty and echoey, a magnet for small boys.[6]

“Auntie Kate, can we build a fire there?” Seamus, Sam’s friend, is jumping up and down with excitement.

I add a bundle of cotton balls and a tub of vaseline to the picnic basket.[7] I did not know how to make fire lighters[8] when I lived in Paris nearly 10 years ago.

A peanut-butter-colored kitten, the smallest of our tribe, trails the three of us as we traipse down the slope.[9] The boys scramble into the pipe with shouts of glee.[10] They coax the kitten in, drink their mugs of lemonade,[11] and ask for more.

“This is so cool,” Seamus says. His “cool” ricochets off the smooth concrete walls of the pipe.[12] “Cool... cool.”

A few yards away, I collect sticks for the kindling[13] I need to make tonight’s fire. The electricity will flick off[14] soon, as it does most days.

I had an e-mail today from a former colleague at the international news agency I once worked for in France. She’s now the head of a news bureau[15] in Asia. “My flat is in a modern Western-style building with a gym, a pool, and a shop,” she writes. “I have a housing allowance so it’s all free.”[16]

I love getting e-mails from my friends. Sasha, a speech and drama teacher, tells of toy libraries and her son’s Wii[17] games in rural middle England. Louise, a freelance[18] editor, writes of buying a flat in London and blogging in Spain. Emma, who sat next to me in many lectures at university, fills me in[19] on a recent holiday she took in Venice with her infant daughter. “I couldn’t remember how to say ‘crawl’ in Italian,” she laughs.

My friends’ missives[20] are fascinating windows into lives that I can’t help feeling might easily have been my own. Occasionally though, those e-mails can send me spiraling into self-doubt.

My 6-year-old son knows how to make a spinning top with a ripe loquat fruit and a toothpick.[21] But will he miss having a Wii game? If I’d persuaded my Zimbabwean husband to move with me to Paris, would we now be taking minibreaks in sunny European cities?

Would I have achieved more if I’d climbed a corporate ladder rather than launching a freelance life in a beautiful but underdeveloped African country?

To compare yourself with your contemporaries is human. But it is also good, I’m learning, to try to find contentment where you can. If today I lived in Paris with my family, we would visit the Musée d’Orsay and the Pompidou Centre.[22] Maybe we’d eat croque-monsieur[23] on Saturdays.

But there would be no tunnel at the bottom of the garden. My child wouldn’t live in a place where “blessing” is one of the most common words you hear.

When bread, fuel, and sugar were in short supply in Zimbabwe four years ago, I spent hours searching for basics on the main Herbert Chitepo Street. I was astonished by the number of shoppers who, in response to my greeting: “How are you?” answered: “I’m blessed.”

“Why?” I asked an acquaintance once, an elderly lecturer with degrees in classics and child development. “We don’t have much,” he explained simply (his monthly salary then was worth around $18). “But we have friends and homes and we made it[24] through another week.”

Zimbabweans believe in blessings so firmly that Chipo (which means “blessing” or “gift” in the local language) is a favorite baby name.

It’s 5 o’clock. In a newsroom in Paris, former colleagues will be pushing scheduled stories onto the newswire.[25]

I hear a crackle of twigs.[26] Seamus’s mother struggles her way through the undergrowth[27]. “You guys look like you’re having fun,” she smiles. We pour a bucket of water onto the embers of our fire and trudge up to the veranda.[28]

Later, I go back to the tunnel to collect the boys’ mugs. I flash my torch inside to where they were drawing cave pictures with bits of charcoal from my coal scuttle[29]. In smudged[30] letters, one of them has written the words: “Treasure. Here.”

Vocabulary

1. laptop: 笔记本电脑。

2. flask: 长颈瓶;lemonade: 柠檬(汽)水;ginger cookie: 姜汁饼干。

3. Zimbabwe: 津巴布韦，非洲南部一国家。

4. bushy: 植物茂密的;scrapland: 废弃之地;shimmy: 扭肩摆臀。

5. trickle: 细流。

6. echoey: 有回声的;magnet: 有吸引力的物或人。

7. tub: 塑料杯，纸杯;vaseline: 凡士林，人造矿脂。

8. lighter: 点火器，打火机。

9. 一只花生酱颜色的小猫——我们中间的小不点——尾随着我们三人走下斜坡。traipse: 漫步，闲荡。

10. scramble: 匍匐前进，爬行;glee: 欢喜，高兴。

11. coax: 诱哄;mug: 圆筒形有柄大杯。

12. ricochet: 反弹，跳飞，此处指产生回音;concrete: 混凝土制的。

13. kindling: [总称] 引火物。

14. flick off:(灯)一下子灭掉。

15. bureau: 分社，办事处。

16. gym: 健身房;housing allowance: 住房津贴。

17. Wii: 是日本任天堂公司(Nintendo)出品的家用电视游戏机。

18. freelance: 做自由职业者的。

19. fill in: 向……提供最新消息。

20. missive: 信件。

21. 我六岁的儿子知道如何用生糍粑果和牙签来做一个旋转陀螺。

22. Musée d’Orsay: 奥赛博物馆，位于塞纳河的左岸，享有“欧洲最美的博物馆”的美誉;Pompidou Centre: 蓬皮杜(国家艺术文化)中心，位于塞纳河的右岸。

23. Croque Monsieur: 法式吐司，由香辣奶酪和火腿三明治制作而成，是地道的法国小吃。

24. make it: 做到，成功。

25. newsroom: 资讯编辑室;newswire: 资讯专线。

26. crackle: 噼啪声;twig: 细枝。

27. undergrowth: 灌木丛，矮树丛。

28. ember: 余火，余烬;trudge: 跋涉，吃力地走;veranda: 游廊，阳台。

29. coal scuttle: 煤斗，煤桶。

30. smudged: 弄脏的，脏兮兮的。