Alexander Smith: Tea Time for the Traditionally Built People

“It's time to replace the van, Mma Ramotswe,” he had said, only a few months earlier. And then he had added, “No vehicle lasts forever, you know.”

“I know that, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni,” she said. “But surely it's wrong to replace a vehicle that still has a lot of life left in it. That's not very responsible, I think.”

“Your van is over twenty,” he said. “Twenty-two years old, I believe. That is about half the age of Botswana itself.”

It had not been a wise comparison, and Mma Ramotswe seized on it. “So you would replace Botswana?” she said. “When a country gets old, you say, That's enough, let's get a new country. I'm surprised at you, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.”

This unsatisfactory conversation had ended there, but Mma Ramotswe knew that if she reported the van to him it would be tantamount to signing its death warrant. She thought about that this evening, as she prepared the potatoes for the family dinner. The house was quiet: Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was not going to be in until later, as he had delivered one car to Lobatse and was coming back in another. The two foster children, Puso and Motholeli, were in their rooms, tackling their homework, or so Mma Ramotswe thought, until she heard the sound of laughter drifting down the corridor. She imagined that they were sharing a joke or the memory of something amusing that had happened at school that day, a remark made by a friend, a humiliation suffered by an unpopular teacher.

The laughter suddenly broke out again, and this time it was followed by giggles. Homework had to be finished by dinner time; that was the rule, and too much laughing at jokes would not help that. Putting down her potato peeler, Mma Ramotswe went to investigate.

“Motholeli?” she asked outside the girl's closed door.

The giggling that had been going on inside the room stopped abruptly. Tapping lightly-Mma Ramotswe always respected the children's privacy-she pushed the door open.

Motholeli was in her wheelchair near her small work-table, facing another girl of similar age, who was sitting in the chair beside the bed. The two had been giggling uncontrollably, as their eyes, Mma Ramotswe noticed, had tears of laughter in the corners.

“Your homework must be very funny today,” Mma Ramotswe said.

Motholeli glanced conspiratorially at her friend, and then looked back at Mma Ramotswe. “This is my friend,” she said. “She is called Alice.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at the other girl, who rose to her feet politely and lowered her head. The greetings exchanged, the visitor sat down.

“Have you done your homework, Motholeli?” Mma Ramotswe asked.

The girl replied that it was completely finished; it had been easy she said; so simple that even Puso could have done it, and he was several years younger.

“The reason why our homework is so simple today,” Alice explained, “is that the teacher who gave it to us is not very intelligent. She can only mark simple homework.”

This observation set the two girls giggling again, and Mma Ramotswe had to bite her lip to prevent herself from giggling too. But she could not join in the girls' mirth at the expense of a teacher. Teachers had to be respected-as they always had been in Botswana -and if children thought them stupid, then that would hardly encourage respect.

“I do not think that this teacher can be like that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Teachers have to pass examinations. They are very well-educated.”

“Not this one,” said Motholeli, setting the two children off in paroxysms of laughter.

Mma Ramotswe gave up. There was no point in trying to stop teenage girls from giggling; that was the way they were. One might as well try to stop men liking football. The analogy made her stop and think. Football. Tomorrow morning, if she remembered correctly, Mr. Leungo Molofololo had arranged to come to see her at ten o'clock. Mma Ramotswe was used to receiving well-known people, but Mr. Molofololo, by any standards, would be an important client. Not only did he have a large house up at Phulukane-a house which must have cost many millions of pula to build-but he had the ear of virtually every influential person in the country. Mr. Molofololo controlled the country's best football team, and that, in the world of men, counted for more than anything else.

“He is just a man,” Mma Makutsi had said, after Mr. Molofololo's secretary had called to make the appointment. “The fact that he has a football team is neither here nor there, Mma. He is the same as any man.”

But Mma Ramotswe thought differently. Mr. Molofololo was not just any man; he was Mr. Football.

THE NEXT MORNING, over breakfast, Mma Ramotswe announced to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni that she would be walking to work that day. She had taken the decision an hour or so earlier, in the middle of her habitual stroll around her garden, shortly after inspecting the pawpaw trees that marked the boundary between her plot and the small piece of wasteland that ran behind it. She had planted the trees herself when first she had come to Zebra Drive and the garden had been nothing, just hard earth, scrub, and sour weeds. Now the trees were laden with fruit, heavy yellow orbs that she would shortly pick and enjoy. She liked pawpaw, but neither Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nor the children did, and so these would be for her alone, a private treat, served with orange juice and topped, perhaps, with a small sprinkling of sugar.

Beside the pawpaw trees was an acacia tree in which birds liked to pause on their journeys and in which Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had once seen a long green snake, curled around a branch, its tail hanging down like an elongated twig to be brushed against by some unwary person passing below. The sighting of snakes was an everyday occurrence in Botswana, but the unfortunate creatures were never left alone. Mma Ramotswe did not like to kill them and had thoroughly agreed with a recent public plea from the Wildlife Department that people should refrain from doing anything about snakes unless they actually came into the house. They have their place, said the official, and if there were no snakes, then there would be many more rats, and all the rats would make quick work of the patiently gathered harvest.

That message, though, went against most people's deepest instincts. Mma Makutsi, for example, had no time for snakes, and would not hesitate to dispose of one should she have the chance.

“It's all very well for the Government, Mma Ramotswe,” she said. “Tell me, are there any snakes coming into government offices? These government people do not have to live with snakes as people do in the villages or at the cattle posts. You ask those people out there what to do about snakes and you will get a very different answer.”

She then went on to tell Mma Ramotswe about an incident which she claimed had happened at Bobonong when she was a girl. A large snake-a mamba-had taken up residence in a tree beside a popular path. From one of its branches this snake had dropped down on an old man walking below, with tragic consequences; nobody could survive a mamba bite, least of all an old man. How did Mma Ramotswe think they dealt with the problem?

Mma Ramotswe thought for a moment. “I think that they probably got one of the women to make up a big pot of hot porridge,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Boiling hot. That woman put a cloth on her head and balanced the pot of porridge on top of that. Then she walked under the tree and called out to the snake. Mambas think that very rude. So it dropped down into the porridge and was burned. I imagine that is probably what happened, Mma.”

Mma Makutsi stared at her, wide-eyed. “But that is extraordinary, Mma. That is it exactly. How did you guess?”

Mma Ramotswe smiled, but said nothing. She did not tell Mma Makutsi that this story was an old one, and that she had heard it from one of her aunts, who had presumably heard it from her mother. There were many such stories, and perhaps a long time ago some of them had been true. Now they had acquired the force of truth, innocently enough, and people really believed that these things had happened.