Alexander Smith: The Double Comfort Safari Club

Mrs. Grant’s will has proved relatively easy to put into effect. But although I have been able to identify and pay most of the beneficiaries of her bequests, I have been left with one that I feel is going to be more difficult. That is the one that I am writing to you about, with a view to engaging your services to help me identify the person who is entitled to the bequest in question. That person, I believe, lives in your country.

Please allow me to explain. Mrs. Grant was not a great traveller. I was aware of the fact that she visited Jamaica ten years ago, and had made two or three trips to Europe over the years. One special trip she did make, though, was to Botswana, which she visited exactly four years ago, in the month of June or possibly July. Some time around then. I knew about this trip because she spoke to me about it. She also showed me the pictures she had taken, and I must say that I was most impressed with the beauty of your country.

It was more than simple natural beauty that impressed Mrs. Grant. In addition to that, she was very taken with the kindness of the people whom she encountered. She talked to me about this on more than one occasion, saying that she had never before come across such warmth and courtesy being shown to strangers. I believe that this affected her very deeply.

I am sorry to say that about nine months ago Mrs. Grant fell ill. The diagnosis was not a good one, and although she remained lucid and composed, I think that her end was not an altogether easy one. I visited her regularly, and we talked about many things. It is strange how the imminence of death can either focus the conversation between two people, or can render them curiously mute. In our case, many things were said that had remained unsaid during the course of our friendship. In particular, we reflected on the fact that although we had both lost our spouses some years earlier, it had not occurred to us to change our friendship into marriage. And now it was too late, as it often is. (Please forgive me for recounting these somewhat personal matters-I do so, I think, because the person at the Embassy who recommended you said to me that you were a sympathetic and understanding woman.)

It was on one of my visits to Mrs. Grant in the hospital that she said to me that there was an extra provision that she wanted me to draft for her will. I did this there and then, using nurses as witnesses, as it is my firm belief that one should never lose time in putting into writing a client’s verbal instructions relating to a will. I was right, as it happened: Mrs. Grant died two days later.

That day in the hospital, Mrs. Grant told me a story. She said that when she had gone to Botswana she had visited, as many do, the Okavango Delta. She had gone, again as so many others do, to a safari camp on the edge of the river and had stayed there for four days. I knew all about this, of course, as she had already told me of that visit. What I did not know, though, was that there was a guide there who had been particularly kind to her. He had taken her on a bush walk and had gone to great trouble to locate a lioness that they had been able to observe from a safe distance. She said that this guide had gone out of his way to make her visit a memorable one. In his eyes, she said, I was probably a passerby from a remote place, but that made no difference. He treated me as if I were a member of his family, an aunt perhaps. There is an expression, “the kindness of strangers”: well, I encountered it very vividly during those days.

Mrs. Grant told me that it was her wish to send a gift to this man. She had meant to write and thank him, but had put it off and put it off, as we often do with such good intentions. Now, in the face of death, she wanted to tie up loose ends, and this was one such. She wanted to thank this man and send him a gift of money. This, she instructed me, was to be the sum of three thousand dollars.

Naturally, I asked for details, so that I could put them into the provision I was drawing up for the will. Unfortunately she could not remember the guide’s name nor, I very much regret to say, the exact name of the camp. All that she was able to say to me was that the camp bore the name of a bird or an animal. And so I had to draft a provision that left the money “to the guide who took such care of me in Botswana,” and to leave the rest for further investigation. That investigation is what I would like you to undertake on my behalf: please locate the camp and find out the name of the man who looked after her. I should not imagine that this will be too difficult. The estate will, of course, meet all expenses and pay such fees as you may reasonably charge. Please confirm that you can undertake this work, and send me a note of your fee rate.

Finally, may I say, Mrs. Ramotswe, that although this seems like a strange request, it is by no means a light or whimsical one. Mrs. Grant was a woman who believed that goodness in this life should not go unrewarded; she was also a fine judge of men. If she said that this guide who looked after her was a good man, then you may rest assured that he was. I am sure, if and when we find him, we shall discover that he deserves this recognition of what he did.

I have enclosed with this letter a copy of Mrs. Grant’s obituary from the local paper. It has a nice photograph of her and it tells you about her life, which was a good one, as you will see.

I remain, yours truly,

Oliver J. Maxwell

“But what if he isn’t?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

The question took Mma Ramotswe by surprise. “But what if who isn’t what?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni looked out over the garden. “What if this guide-whatever his name turns out to be-what if he isn’t a good man at all? He said-this Mr. Oliver J. Maxwell-that we will find that this man deserves the money. But what if he doesn’t?”

Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment. It was not unlike Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to come up with a seemingly simple observation that could turn quite quickly into a profound and complicated question. It was, she conceded, perfectly possible that the guide was not what Mma Grant thought he was: people who look after visitors-hotel people, waiters, and the like-can appear charming on the surface, but only because their job requires that of them. She herself had seen this with one of the waitresses at the café that she frequented at the Riverview shopping centre. It was a good place to sit, affording a ringside seat of all the comings and goings that took place in the car park and around the small craft market that had sprung up, and she had got to know all the waitresses by now. She had found them very helpful and pleasant, but then she had seen one of them mocking a customer behind her back. The episode had not lasted for long, but she had spotted it and then looked away, out of shame for the young woman who was making fun of the customer. Mma Ramotswe had felt outraged. It was the sort of thing that would never have happened in her father’s Botswana, that Botswana in which young people had shown respect for older people, not out of fear or for any other craven reason, but simply because they had lived longer and had acquired something that could only be described as wisdom. Yes, wisdom: that was something that came to everybody, although it came in varying quantities and at different times. Wisdom, which was an understanding of the feelings of others and of what would work and what would not work; which stood by one’s shoulder and said this is right or this is wrong, or this person is lying or this person is telling the truth. And now here was this waitress, who was seventeen, perhaps, pulling a face and imitating the expression of that harmless woman who, admittedly, was wearing a dress that was quite unsuitable for one of her figure-such legs should not be displayed, even in modern Botswana-and what if that poor woman heard the giggling and turned round and saw herself being parodied?