village

I just called my village family. In the village where I left them at the end of January.
I'm still spinning from it.
I begged them to summon my grandmother
from her little house,
who says water comes from her eyes when she thinks about me,
and asked when I'm coming back again.
I said in two years
and forbade her to get Heavily Ill.
My host mother and I discussed
the many layers of clothes I'm wearing,
the phone card I had to buy to ring them,
the dry hot season they're having,
and the fact that my sisters
had dreamed of me the night before,
which was clearly now
an omen that I would be in touch.
My brother Jane and I discussed
his fever
and the young papaya trees now growing
on his farm.
My niece Srei Leakh
informed me about her birthday
and the gifts she was given,
and asked about a hundred times
if I missed her.
The village chief, my adopted father,
said he's tired of working for no money
as the village chief,
but the authorities won't let him resign,
and asked when my wedding was scheduled...

Which brings us to my Lie.
I felt bad about this Lie all year.
It was an attempt to go into the village
as a respectable and comprehensible unmarried woman.
I said I had left a fiancee back in Scotland,
who I'd marry after I finished my schooling.
And then by the time I started feeling really guilty
about this whole lie,
it had already been passed all the way up
to the DISTRICT GOVERNOR,
and it was too late.
I figured that if the entire district
found out I'd been telling stories,
they would assume that nothing
about me was as it seemed.
So now I had to kill this Lie,
this albatross of falsehood.
This involved More Lying.
Shameful.
I said that our hearts
were no longer in agreement
because I had been away too long,
and the wedding was off.
So. Lies upon lies.

One of the gentlemen farmers,
this rich man who has a farm
and a job in the capital
and comes up occasionally
to faff about and get very drunk
with the village chief,
had informed my host family
that I had severed my heart
from them all
as evidenced by my not calling.
I felt quite annoyed by this.
But now they can tell him
he's wrong.
They dreamed of me,
and I called
from a cold land,
to a hot place
waiting for the rain,
and about to welcome in
their new year.