Alexander McCall Smith - Tears of the Giraffe

"This was the room they used as an office," said Mma Potsane. "They kept all the receipts and they had a small safe over there, in that corner. People sent them money, you know.

There were people in other countries who thought that this place was important. They believed that it could show that dry places like this could be changed. They wanted us to show that people could live together in a place like this and share everything."

Mma Ramotswe nodded. She was familiar with people who liked to test out all sorts of theories about how people might live. There was something about the country that attracted them, as if in that vast, dry country there was enough air for new ideas to breathe. Such people had been excited when the Brigade movement had been set up. They had thought it a very good idea that young people should be asked to spend time working for others and helping to build their country; but what was so exceptional about that? Did young people not work in rich countries? Perhaps they did not, and that is why these people, who came from such countries, should have found the whole idea so exciting. There was nothing wrong with these people-they were kind people usually, and treated the Batswana with respect. Yet somehow it could be tiring to be given advice. There was always some eager foreign organisation ready to say to Africans: this is what you do, this is how you should do things. The advice may be good, and it might work elsewhere, but Africa needed its own solutions.

This farm was yet another example of one of these schemes that did not work out. You could not grow vegetables in the Kalahari. That was all there was to it. There were many things that could grow in a place like this, but these were things that belonged here. They were not like tomatoes and lettuces. They did not belong in Botswana, or at least not in this part of it.

They left the office and wandered through the rest of the house. Several of the rooms were open to the sky, and the floors in these rooms were covered in leaves and twigs. Lizards darted for cover, rustling the leaves, and tiny, pink and white geckoes froze where they clung to the walls, taken aback by the totally unfamiliar intrusion. Lizards; geckoes; the dust in the air; this was all it was-an empty house. Save for the photograph.

MMA POTSANE was pleased once they were out again, and suggested that she show Mma Ramotswe the place where the vegetables had been grown. Again, the land had reasserted itself, and all that remained to show of the scheme was a pattern of wandering ditches, now eroded into tiny canyons. Here and there, it was possible to see where the wooden poles supporting the shade-netting had been erected, but there was no trace of the wood itself, which, like everything else, had been consumed by the ants.

Mma Ramotswe shaded her eyes with a hand.

"All that work," she mused. "And now this."

Mma Potsane shrugged her shoulders. "But that is always true, Mma," she said. "Even Gaborone. Look at all those buildings. How do we know that Gaborone will still be there in fifty years' time? Have the ants not got their plans for Gaborone as well?"

Mma Ramotswe smiled. It was a good way of putting it. All our human endeavours are like that, she reflected, and it is only because we are too ignorant to realize it, or are too forgetful to remember it, that we have the confidence to build something that is meant to last. Would the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency be remembered in twenty years' time? Or Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors? Probably not, but then did it matter all that much?

The melancholy thought prompted her to remember. She was not here to dream about archaeology but to try to find out something about what happened all those years ago. She had come to read a place, and had found that there was nothing, or almost nothing, to be read. It was as if the wind had come and rubbed it all out, scattering the pages, covering the footsteps with dust.

She turned to Mma Potsane, who was silent beside her.

"Where does the wind come from, Mma Potsane?"

The other woman touched her cheek, in a gesture which Mma Ramotswe did not understand. Her eyes looked empty, Mma Ramotswe thought; one had dulled, and was slightly milky; she should go to a clinic.

"Over there," said Mma Potsane, pointing out to the thorn trees and the long expanse of sky, to the Kalahari. "Over there."

Mma Ramotswe said nothing. She was very close, she felt, to understanding what had happened, but she could not express it, and she could not tell why she knew.

MR J.L.B. Matekoni's bad-tempered maid was slouching at the kitchen door, her battered red hat at a careless, angry angle. Her mood had become worse since her employer had revealed his unsettling news, and her waking hours had been spent in contemplating how she might avert catastrophe. The arrangement which she had with Mr J.L.B. Matekoni suited her very well. There was not a great deal of work to do; men never worried about cleaning and polishing, and provided they were well fed they were very untroublesome employers. And she did feed Mr J.L.B. Matekoni well, no matter what that fat woman might be saying to the contrary. She had said that he was too thin! Thin by her standards perhaps, but quite well built by the standards of any normal people. She could just imagine what she had in store for him-spoonfuls of lard for breakfast and thick slices of bread, which would puff him up like that fat chief from the north, the one who broke the chair when he went to visit the house where her cousin worked as a maid.

But it was not so much the welfare of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni that concerned her, it was her own threatened position. If she had to go off and work in a hotel she would not be able to entertain her men friends in that same way. Under the current arrangement, men were able to visit her in the house while her employer was at work-without his knowledge, of course- and they were able to go into Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's room where there was the large double bed which he had bought from Central Furnishers. It was very comfortable-wasted on a bachelor, really-and the men liked it. They gave her presents of money, and the gifts were always better if they were able to spend time together in Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's room. That would all come to an end if anything changed.

The maid frowned. The situation was serious enough to merit desperate action, but it was hard to see what she could do. There was no point trying to reason with him; once a woman like that had sunk her claws into a man then there would be no turning him back. Men became quite unreasonable in such circumstances and he simply would not listen to her if she tried to tell him of the dangers that lay ahead. Even if she found out something about that woman-something about her past-he would probably pay no attention to the disclosure. She imagined confronting Mr J.L.B. Matekoni with the information that his future wife was a murderess! That woman has already killed two husbands, she might say. She put something in their food. The are both dead now because of her.

But he would say nothing, and just smile. I do not believe you, he would retort; and he would continue to say that even if she waved the headlines from the Botswana Daily News: Mma Ramotswe murders husband with poison. Police take porridge away and do tests. Porridge found to he full of poison. No, he would not believe it.

She spat into the dust. If there was nothing that she could do to get him to change his mind, then perhaps she had better think about some way of dealing with Mma Ramotswe. If Mma Ramotswe were simply not there, then the problem would have been solved, if she could... No, it was a terrible thing to think, and then she probably would not be able to afford to hire a witch doctor. They were very expensive when it came to removing people, and it was far too risky anyway. People talked, and the police would come round, and she could imagine nothing worse than going to prison.