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]
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