Love in the Boondocks

By Adam Mann

Dave is working for a development project with farmer families in remote and distant areas, often mountainous. Very few people speak English, and he works with several translators. He comes across several primary school teachers who are working in villages in those areas, and one who does speak good English asks him for help with transport to one of the distant villages, and then inadvertently invites herself for accommodation overnight in Dave’s small village house.
Kim Anh comes from a family of teachers, and unfortunately is just recovering from a failed marriage, so meeting Dave is quite fortuitous and she instinctively cleans and tidies Dave’s kitchen and bedroom.
Kim’s departure to her new village is delayed as her transport is not available, until after the forthcoming luni-solar holidays, and she stays another day in Dave’s house. The weather grows colder and Dave kindly offers her warmer sleeping facilities!
Kim had found Dave an attractive man when she first met him, but Dave found all young ladies beautiful, until Kim began to blossom under Dave’s care.
Initial contact turns to passion and passion to deep love!
Everything works out well until Kim’s co-teacher turns up with a baby, a non-husband, and big problems!

• Language: English
• Publisher: ButterflyBooks
• Release date: Nov 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370875634

Adam Mann

Adam Mann has lived and worked in Africa and then Asia for many years. He has always been fascinated by personal relationships, and in real life is now enjoying his fourth marriage, after being widowed, divorced, and even had a marriage annulled as this ‘wife’ had forgotten to get divorced.As a result he has extensive experience of social and sexual activities, which he brings into his books in explicit detail. Underlying all these activities is a quest for a loving and ongoing relationship with his partner.Adam Mann is a pen name.

Book preview

Prologue

The motor bike revved and gradually crept forward over the rutted road. It wasn’t really a motor bike, more a motor scooter, but it was all they had to travel with on these remote tracks. This track in places would have been too narrow even for a 4WD like a Jeep – one side was a high bank and the other side only four feet away was nothing – just fresh air in an open space with what appeared to be a hundred-foot drop to the valley floor.

Dave adjusted his feet on the pedals trying not to look down and gave the accelerator handle a hard twist. The motor revved again and this time the back wheel managed to grip the wet and muddy track, and the bike lurched forward.

He looked up after a bit and the village appeared in the distance. About twenty houses built from bamboo and palm thatch, and a small school building comprising a single room with low walls and a moulded fibre roof that the project had supplied earlier.

When Dave reached the school, he could see the heads of children peering at him over the low walls, and their lone woman teacher dressed in a long white dress teacher trying to keep their attention by waving a long piece of wood towards the green painted blackboard.

The view over the valley was stupendous, but today a bit hazy in the far distance. The air was clean so he took a deep breath of the clean but cold air.

He drove on to the house where the village head lived, and where today Dave and the project team, the village head and several farmer families would be reviewing their progress. Behind him several other motorbikes were straggling along. He waited for them all to arrive, got off his bike and stretched his long six-foot frame. They all walked together into the house, which was raised off the floor to a platform of thick bamboo poles by about six feet.

They all took off the mud-covered boots or shoes at the base of the wooden ladder like steps leading to the house before they climbed up.

The meeting finished just before lunch, and several farmers’ wives carried large plates of food into the house of the village head where they would all be eating. Several other farmers and their wives joined in the lunch which they ate sitting cross legged on the wooden floor.

The smartly dressed primary school teacher also came for lunch, and used her unusual good knowledge of English to greet Dave and the project workers, but to Dave today her name was lost in space.

Dave looked at his wrist watch, and noticed that the date was 24th, and then he remembered tomorrow would be Christmas Day, but in this part of the world Christmas was hardly noticed, except perhaps by children in the big cities.

After lunch Dave and some of the project staff all talked together, joined occasionally by one of the farmers, whilst others lay back on the floor and slept off the effect of the strong rice alcohol that was always an accompaniment for meals in these hillside villages.

It was already two o’clock before they all trekked down to the first field below the village. The crops were winter maize, grown in rows in the paddy fields immediately after the summer crop was harvested, and this was maize planned for harvesting in the New Year – that is the Gregorian New Year.

There were three groups of about twenty farmers, field schools they called them, and each group was growing a different variety of maize. The farmers were looking forward to income from the sale of the grain, and Dave broke off a single cob to look at the seed development. The farmers crowded around him and all nodded wisely with pursed lips even though none of them had ever grown this variety before.

In East Asia life was regulated by two calendars – the Gregorian for all official documents, and the luni-solar calendar which regulated all family life completely, and was usually several days, or even a few weeks, behind the official government dates.

So, what is the date today? Dave asked his interpreter.

Twenty-six, month eleven, he was told.

Dave and the project team often stayed overnight in villages, but not today. Overnight stops were usually at the beginning of a crop, or during a village project. Dave remembered staying here about one year ago, and the village head had proudly offered Dave his polished wooden table as a bed, with a small wooden pillow! Fortunately, Dave had become used to this, and managed to flatten his long and angular frame to lie on a flat surface, and sleep, but he put the wooden pillow aside!

They all said goodnight to the village head and his wife. By five o’clock they all navigated their way back downhill towards the main village in the valley, and Dave said goodnight as he made his way to the small house that he had rented. It was getting dark.

Dave’s house was basically two rooms and a verandah at the front, built from brick and cement with a concrete floor and a tiled roof, with a simple kitchen and bathroom at the back. Not much privacy but effective. At least there was a door to Dave’s bedroom which he could shut but not lock. The front door had an inside bolt, but often Dave did not lock the door at night.

It was too late now to cook so Dave joined the project staff and they walked to one of the two small restaurants in the village, and drank warm beer with ice cubes to cool it, and after dinner they all walked back to the places that each of them had rented for the duration of the project.

About fifteen months of the project life had already elapsed, with another nine months more to go, but they all expected a twelve-month extension to make a total of three years.

Dave’s house had some electricity most of the time so he was able to switch on his laptop, and wriggle his G3 satellite connection into life. Tonight, it worked, so he was able to catch up on some emails, and news, but most was about Christmas celebrations in other countries. By about ten Dave switched off his laptop and went to bed, expecting to get up