Alexander Smith - The Double Comfort Safari Club

This clearly pleased Mma Makutsi. “Yes,” she said approvingly. “That is the general rule with business trips. They told us about that at the Botswana Secretarial College.” She did not mention that they had also warned: Do not go on business trips with your boss. Of course they had in mind a situation where a male employer invited a female secretary to accompany him on a business trip. That was an invitation to disaster in most cases, as more might be expected of the secretary than mere dictation. This was quite different, of course; a business trip with a female boss was just a business trip. But she wondered what expenses there would be. If they were travelling up to Maun in Mma Ramotswe’s van, then there would be no tickets to be bought, and Mma Ramotswe had never asked her to pay for any petrol. There would be no hotel, if they were staying with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s cousins, and she would not need any new clothes or… Shoes?

“That is very nice,” Mma Makutsi said brightly. “You mean incidental expenses?”

Mma Ramotswe nodded, cautiously.

“Such as shoe expenses?” Mma Makutsi ventured.

There was a silence. “I’m not sure what shoe expenses are, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “If your shoes are damaged up there, then of course the office will pay for them to be fixed. But that is very unlikely, I think. I was thinking more of…” She was about to list the purchase of the occasional snack on the journey, and the cost of food up in Maun, but she did not have the chance to complete what she was saying.

“It is very wild up there,” said Mma Makutsi firmly. “It is the Delta, as you know. It is not Gaborone, where there are streets and where the paths are safe. This is the bush, Mma, and you cannot wear town shoes in bush like that. You will fall into an anteater hole, or something like that. There are many things like that in the Okavango Delta.” And then, with a final flourish, a petard of Mma Ramotswe’s own making now hoist, “That is well known, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe struggled to contain herself. “What do you have in mind, Mma Makutsi?” And then, with what she felt was a very timely move, she said, “I shall be very happy to lend you a pair of my stout shoes, Mma. You cannot wear those nice green shoes of yours up in the Delta,” and added, “even if they would be very good camouflage.” Irresistibly, irreverently, she imagined Mma Makutsi moving through the thick grass, her feet now successfully camouflaged and invisible, but her large glasses catching the sun and giving everything away.

Mma Makutsi shook her head. “That is very kind of you, Mma, and I am very grateful. I would not want you to think that I did not appreciate your offer.” She paused to take breath. “Your shoes have always struck me as being very sensible, and will be very good up in the Delta. There is no doubt about that. But there is a problem here. Your feet are very good feet, Mma, but they are not small feet. My own feet are not the smallest feet in Gaborone, but they are not quite as large as your own feet are. And that means I cannot wear your shoes, as they would fall off every time I took a step.”

Mma Ramotswe bit her lip. Phuti Radiphuti was well off, he could afford to buy his fiancée new shoes, and she did not think it appropriate that shoes should be treated as a business expense.

“I was thinking of a pair of those boots that they have for ladies,” Mma Makutsi suggested. “You’ve seen them, Mma. You know those ones which go up to the ankles-or just above, and have laces at the front. They’re usually made of light brown suede. They’re very smart, but also very practical. Those are the shoes that I’ll need.” Then she added, “And I know where to buy them, Mma. I have seen a pair for three hundred pula. That is a very good buy.”

Mma Ramotswe looked out of the window. She knew of Mma Makutsi’s interest in shoes. It was not all that long ago that she had acquired yet another pair, only six months or so after she had bought the previous pair. With this new green pair, how many pairs of shoes did her assistant now have? There were the blue shoes, the red shoes, the shoes that looked as if they had been made out of crocodile skin, or something similar (Mma Makutsi had not been amused by Mma Ramotswe’s suggestion that it might be anteater or even porcupine skin), although not much had been seen of those after they proved so fashionable as to be impossible to walk in. On the whole, she did not need yet another pair of shoes, and yet what she said was true: one could not walk about the bush in town shoes. But it was also true that the only reason Mma Makutsi needed to walk about the bush was because Mma Ramotswe had invited her to go with her to Maun.

She turned round. “All right, Mma. You can take the money from the petty cash. Go and get those shoes.”

She felt better immediately for saying this. Mma Makutsi was a hard worker. She had not had much in this life, and she had worked diligently for everything she did have, including her shoes. This was a very distressing time, and if she could be helped through it by indulging her passion for shoes, then that was, perhaps, something that Mma Ramotswe owed her.

Mma Makutsi’s gratitude was plain to see. “Oh, Mma, that is very good news. Why don’t you come with me right now, and we can go and get those boots? And some boots for you too.”

Mma Ramotswe raised her hands in protest. “I do not need boots, Mma. I’ve got my comfortable flat shoes. You could walk across the Kalahari-and back-in those shoes of mine.”

“And what if you stand on a snake, Mma, while you’re walking across the Kalahari? What then?”

“I will be very careful,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I’ve been walking about Botswana for a long time and I have not yet stood on a snake. And we’re not going to the Kalahari. We’re going to the Okavango Delta.”

“Careful, Mma!” Mma Makutsi warned. “There is always a first time for everything. There is something called the law of averages-you may have heard of it. It says that if you haven’t trodden on a snake yet, then you may tread on one soon-soon.”

THEY DROVE IN THE VAN to Riverwalk. There was a small parking incident, in which Mma Ramotswe narrowly avoided scraping the wing of the next-door car, a gleaming piece of German machinery. It was a narrow escape, and Mma Makutsi could not avoid a sharp intake of breath as the two vehicles had their close encounter.

“That car is far too big,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is taking up too much room. Soon there will be not enough room in Botswana for the rest of us if these big cars keep coming.”

“Maybe we should have given it a bit more room, Mma,” her assistant said. “I’m not criticising your driving, but it is sometimes a good idea to give big cars a bit more room.”

Mma Ramotswe was having none of that. “You are not a big person just because you have a big car. All people are entitled to the same amount of room.”

That settled, they made their way into the covered walkway between the shops. Halfway along, beside a shop selling clothing, was a shop devoted to tents, mosquito nets, sheath knives, and the other requirements of those setting off into the bush. Mma Ramotswe’s eye was drawn to a stand displaying compasses, and a booklet entitled How Not to Get Lost in the Bush. She picked up the booklet and paged through it. There was a section on how to find north, south, east, and west. She smiled as she read this; it could not have been intended for any local readers. Everybody she knew was fully aware of exactly which way north lay-because that was the direction in which the Francistown Road ran; South Africa was over there, beyond Tlokweng, to the east; Lobatse lay in the south; and to the west was the Kalahari, which anybody with a nose could smell, apart from anything else, because when the wind came from that quarter it was a fragrant mixture of dryness and emptiness and waving grass. But she had to acknowledge that if one did not know these things-and a visitor could hardly be expected to-then this book, with its diagrams and its explanation of how to track the passage of the sun by inserting a stick into the ground, was well worth its eighty-pula cover price.