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.
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