A Country That's So Close and Yet So Far
"Our garden"
Hiromi Kimoto
February 18, 2002
There are two mango trees in our garden. From the end of May when I have moved to this place until June, I rarely had a day without eating orange-colored, sweet mangoes. Rather than plucking them off the trees, I picked up the ones that have been fallen on the ground. Thinking that it is about the time the trees start to bloom and bear fruits, I observed them carefully and found several fruits that were glossy green but still very tiny. We apparently have a poor harvest this year. I looked at my neighbors' houses wondering how it is in their gardens. While some trees were bearing a lot of large fruits that were about to color as well, some others were already in white flowers.
We had a mango tree also in the garden of our house in Sri Lanka, but we could not try the fruits since all of them were pecked by crows before they become orange. I remember that our Sri Lankan maid has told me that it would be great to cook curry with small unripe fruits, but I did not try this either after all. While there were so many crows that were almost uncanny in Sri Lanka, I have never seen even one crow as in Vientiane. Well, I remember that I have not seen any in Bangkok either.
In the night about three days ago, it rained after six months. It was a fine, soft rain. I thought it was finally the beginning of the rainy season, but I then found out it was not. As I said "It rained. I guess it is the begging of the rainy season" to my friend, she replied "Oh, you mean the yesterday's rain. That was a mango rain." Ah-ha, I see. It was a mango rain. The mango trees must have been pleased to be bathed in the soft rain.
This is what happened at the swimming pool I went today. There were about eight eucalyptuses in the garden, and the sound of cicadas was ringing out from there. Though I regularly go to the swimming pool everyday, it was my first time to hear the sound of cicadas. They were singing in lower tone as compared with the ones in Japan, but, it was such a magnificent chorus as, I suppose, they were just great in number.
The city of Vientiane is now decorated with yellow, red, and blue flags, and the number of the flags is increasing each day. There also is one with a small sickle mark on a red background, and that is a flag of the Communist Party. It is because that the 7th Party Central Convention is drawing near. Yet, it seems that the exact date is still undecided. That is what I read in the newspapers.
Translated by Maiko Noda
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