There’s a simplicity in his life that I’m starting to envy. And I’m also full of admiration at how he’s been able to adapt to it. Coming from California, it must have been a bit of a culture shock to say the least. As much as it seems appealing, I’m not sure that I could give everything up for this. I think I’m just too grounded in consumerism to change my ways now, yet Dean seems to be the least materialistic person I’ve ever met. Take his house. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. It’s perfectly adequate. It has four solid walls, a roof, a fire and a bed. A nice verandah that doubles as a kitchen. But that’s all it has. There’s no gas cooker, no fridge, no electricity, no bath, no wall-to-wall laminate flooring, no CD player, no modern conveniences at all. No convenience! Unless you count the hole in the ground outside, of course. How many people used to a house stuffed full of Western comforts could cope with that on a permanent basis?

I finish my story and, led by my biggest fan, the children applaud—even the teenagers. How enchanting they are compared to our dull-eyed, bored kids. They cluster round me to show me their exercise books and, from what I’ve seen of my nieces’ and nephews’ homework, their curriculum looks like a scaled-down version of ours, which on their meagre resources is pretty impressive. When we finally manage to prise ourselves away, we leave behind a group of grinning faces, waving madly, and we wander out through the playground, shooing a few chickens out of our way until we’re back on the street again.

‘They’re great kids,’ Dean says. ‘They have so little, but they want to learn so much.’

‘They’re adorable.’

‘I teach them English,’ he says shyly. ‘And math. And probably bad habits.’

‘They obviously love you.’

He squeezes my hand briefly and rather furtively. ‘I’m easy to love.’

‘I can vouch for that,’ I say with a smile.

We carry on down the street, past houses where the women sit outside on straw mats in chattering groups, tiny babies cuddled on their laps while they sift through the harvested rice, carefully picking out each precious grain by hand. None of them look as worse for wear as we do. They giggle and shout greetings as we go by.

‘We’ll be the talk of the village,’ Dean advises me. I expect he is anyway.

At the end of the street, standing rather grandly, there’s one posh building in the village that turns out to belong to the conservation project that Dean works for. It’s painted white and has a roof tiled with wood shingles. The building is surrounded by small plots of cultivated land.