Alexander Smith - The Double Comfort Safari Club

They walked back towards the camp. The deputy manager would show them, he said, to the staff quarters, where they would be spending the night. Afterwards, they could come and have tea with the manager and the senior guide and talk about their mission. As they walked, Mma Ramotswe looked about her: she was still in her country, in Botswana, but it was a different Botswana from the one she knew. The vegetation here seemed very different-the trees were higher, the leaves greener. There were palm trees among the mopani and acacia; there were creepers and vines; everything was denser.

“This is a very beautiful place,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“That is why people come here,” said the deputy manager. “They come because they want to find a beautiful place. That is what people want.”

“There are many beautiful places,” said Mma Makutsi.

The deputy manager looked at her appreciatively, as if impressed by the wisdom of her observation. “I think that you are right,” he said.

Nothing more was said on the rest of the walk to the staff quarters. The woman with whom they were staying met them there, and took them to her small thatched house-a couple of rooms, one of which she had cleared for her guests. Mma Ramotswe looked at the floor, on which two reed sleeping mats had been laid. Beside each mat, a glass jam jar filled with water had been placed, each holding a small bunch of white and yellow flowers. The floor had been recently swept, and bore the marks of the brush, tiny scratch-like lines. A rough cupboard, unsteady on its legs she imagined, stood against the rear wall, ready for the guests’ possessions. The cupboard had been emptied of its contents and its door now stood ajar. This, she thought, is half a house, and it has been cleared for us.

“You should not have done this just for us,” she said to the woman, who had introduced herself as Mma Sepoi.

Mma Sepoi smiled, and dropped a knee in a small curtsy. “You are my guests, Mma. I want you to be comfortable.”

They settled in, Mma Sepoi telling them about her life while they placed in the rickety cupboard the few possessions they had brought with them. It was an ability that Mme Ramotswe always admired-that of encapsulating a whole life, and often the life of an entire family, in a few sentences. So many people, she had discovered, could do it, and effortlessly too; in her own case, she needed time. Where would one start? With Obed Ramotswe meeting her mother, bashful and hesitant about marriage, when he came back for a break from his work in the mines? With her return to Mochudi and that terrible stormy night when her mother, in circumstances that were yet to be fully explained, wandered onto the railway line that ran from Bulawayo down to Mafikeng? With those early days at the school high above Mochudi, where one might hear drifting from down below the sound of cattle bells?

“I have worked here for four years,” said Mma Sepoi. “I am very happy. Some people, you know, that go into one job and then another, they say, This job does not suit me; it has this, that, or the next thing wrong with it. You know people like that, Mma Ramotswe? There are many of them. Not me. I came here after I had worked as a cleaning lady in Maun. Before that I had a job at Jack’s Camp, with the old man, not the son, but the father before him. They are very good people. They know this country better than most people, Mma. And before that I was in Nata, from the time when I was a girl. My father was a policeman there. He was very good at catching stock thieves. If a cattle thief saw him coming, just walking along the road, he would run. Like that. Off. And my father would run after him and catch him because he had been in the police running team. He was a No. 1 police runner. And his father, my grandfather, was from Francistown, and his cattle were all drowned in a big flood on the Shashi River. That happened a long time ago, Mma.”

“A lot has happened in your life,” said Mma Makutsi. “You have had a very eventful life.”

Mma Sepoi acknowledged the compliment. “I have had many things that have happened to me. But I am not complaining. I say that everything that happens has a lesson in it. You look at it and you say, ‘That happened because of this thing.’ And then when it happens next, you know why it happened in the first place.” She paused to take a breath. “That is the way I look at things, Mma.”

Mma Makutsi took off her glasses and polished them. “Are there many animals here, Mma?” she asked. The question was casually posed, but Mma Ramotswe detected an edge to it.

“Oh, there are many,” said Mma Sepoi. She pointed out of the door behind her. “Keep this door closed at night, Mma.”

Mma Makutsi redoubled her polishing efforts. “I always keep my door closed at night,” she said nervously. “It is safer that way.”

“Especially here,” said Mma Sepoi. “I got up the other night because I heard something sniffing at my door. I have a saucepan by my bed and I bang it against the wall to make a noise. Lions don’t like saucepans, Mma.”

Mma Makutsi swallowed. “I have heard that.”

“I’ll leave one by your bed, Mma. So if you need it, you can make a noise.” Mma Sepoi paused. “Of course it may not have been a lion,” she said.

Mma Makutsi looked relieved. A warthog would not frighten anybody; nor an anteater. “Of course. It may have been something else.”

“A leopard, perhaps,” said Mma Sepoi. “They are very dangerous too, you know.”

Later, on their way over to the office in the main camp, Mma Ramotswe noticed that her assistant was walking very close to her, almost bumping into her as they made their way along the narrow path. She tried not to smile; it had never occurred to her that Mma Makutsi would be nervous about being in the Delta. Had Mma Makutsi had a bad experience up in Bobonong, when she was a girl? Sometimes people could be afraid of snakes, for instance, if they had encountered a snake as a child. She had known somebody who had a tendency to faint at the very mention of snakes; and another, she now remembered, who panicked at the sight of a spider. Mma Ramotswe, of course, had a healthy respect for wild animals, but understood that they were generally quite harmless unless one intruded upon their territory, which she had no intention of doing. Mind you, she told herself, the river, on which she and Mma Makutsi had travelled earlier that day, was the territory of the hippopotamus, and the crocodile, and…

They arrived at the camp office. The manager appeared-a tall man, a South African, who stooped to shake hands with them. “I have heard why you have come here, Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “Our chief guide is here. He is called Mighty, and he keeps the roster of who looks after each guest. He will tell you who this fortunate man is.”

They went from the office to the area beside the water where, under the spreading boughs of a tree, chairs had been arranged around an open fireplace. The water was clogged with reeds, over which a brightly coloured bird hovered in flight. A guide, wearing the ubiquitous khaki uniform of the Delta, was standing beside one of the chairs, staring at the place where the fire had been laid, poking at the cold ashes with a stick. He looked up when they approached.

“This is Mighty,” said the manager.

Mighty shook hands with the visitors. Mma Ramotswe found herself warming to him immediately, recognising in him the real countryman, the type that her father had been. Obed Ramotswe had known all there was to know about cattle; she felt that this man knew everything there was to know about the animals of the wild, which was the same sort of thing.

“Do you remember an American lady called Mrs. Grant?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

Mighty looked doubtful. “We get many Americans, Mma. Germans, Swedes, British-all of these people. It is difficult to remember one person out of many hundreds. How many years ago was it, Mma?”