Pea always drives (though not that she's happy about it). She has way more experience, and she's a great driver. We're almost always heavily loaded, either taking food from the Prasat marketout for Mae and family, or bringingplants from the garden and buie (fertilizer, most often from cow and pig) backto town. Pea often goes out to Kravan by herself, but when it's the two of us,it's a heavier load and harder.
Arriving in the village is always a pleasure. The town of Prasat is an unpolluted, peaceful, well-cared for small town, but nothing to compare with the village. When we turn off the highway and ride down the mile-or-so of pot-marked dirt road leading into Kravan, life is simply – fundamentally - different. Or at least it is for me. At some point last year I realized that I
couldn't continue to live a long time more in the village (and especially inside a language – Khmer – that I had so little of), and that's when we moved into town. But a big reason why I live "here" – in the southern part of northeastern Thailand - is because of Kravan, and all the hundreds of villages just like Kravan. Somehow, for me, they are something of a reality check.
Yesterday we pulled up to the house on the motorbike, a group of older people like always sitting inside the thatch hut that we built last year. They all yelled out in greeting, but not in the overly-polite Thai sort of way. Khmer people here, and especially in the village, are much more informal. They are more likely to tease, or to make a joke, than to bother with a polite greeting.
But there is just as keen a sense of welcome.
We immediately unpacked the motorbike and I headed straight to the back garden to check things out. I love the back garden. There's a canopy of beautiful tall areca palms stretching far into the sky. There are mango trees, and jackfruit, pomelo, custard apple, banana, coconut, star fruit. There are pineapples and dragon fruit, and piper ….. vines growing throughout. The soil,
after years of decaying palm fronds, banana leaves, and a world of wild insects munching away, is brown, almost black with humus (unlike most of the lateritic soil here in this part of the world). I used to dream about making a small thatch bungalow for myself under the canopy of the areca palms, but it's better for growing vegetables.
I worked all day, happy. My major job was digging new fence posts and redoing the netting so that the ducks and chickens can't get in. Last year Pea grew yardlong beans, winged beans, several varieties of eggplants, bitter gourd, bird chiles…. With rainy season it will soon be a jungle!
By late afternoon the southwest sky became dark, almost black. Thunder started to boom. I picked up my tools and put everything away, and then headed for the thatch. The eighty-six year old neighbor – a man who always smokes a cheroot and never wears a shirt – was there for a drink of lao khao. So too was Eit, a woman who is probably sixty years old, and one of my favorites. Last year at planting when I injured my back, she got me back up feeling good, the best masseuse in the village. There was Ahn of course, and baby Off. And Kaesorn, sister number one. There were children taking shelter from the rain. Like so many times in the village, it felt like a time when time was standing still. Eit told a funny story about going to a Seven-Eleven in town, having never seen an automatic door. All the older women chewed betel.
No one talked about the economy. No one talked about a sports team.
Pea told everyone about the enormous pla duk (catfish)that we'd seen for sale the day before in the market. She had all ears.
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