Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

CHAPTER SIX. FANWELL'S HOUSE

IT WAS NOT the smallest of houses, as it had two rooms; there were smaller places nearby-single-roomed, made of baked-mud bricks and topped with slanting roofs of corrugated iron, kept standing not so much by the builder's art but by gravity and hope. Fanwell's house stood at the intersection of two unpaved roads in the middle of Old Naledi, surrounded by a tiny yard at the back of which stood a lean-to privy and a couple of small thorn trees. The front door, which gave more or less directly onto the road, was painted bright blue, the national colour, a sign of pride. And although the yard was meagre and the surroundings bleak, the whole place had a tended air about it, the look of having been swept, dusted perhaps by some house-proud hand.

They arrived at that time of the day when late afternoon imperceptibly becomes early evening, a time of lengthening shadows and softening light. There would still be a good hour before darkness descended, and Mma Ramotswe hoped that this would give the apprentice time enough to examine the van. She would sit under one of the trees, she thought, while he worked; there was a comfortable-looking stone there that was obviously used for just such purposes. That would be where the owner of the house sat, she thought; well, she was Fanwell's guest and could sit there if invited.

“So this is your place, Fanwell,” she said as she negotiated the van off the road and onto the small patch of yard.

He turned and smiled at her proudly. “Yes, this is my place, Mma. Or rather it is my grandmother's place. I live here, you see. I live here with the others.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. It was not unusual for a grandmother to be the head of a household, especially now, with that illness that had stalked the land. But who, she wondered, were the others? They could be anybody: Fanwell's brothers and sisters, his cousins, even uncles and aunts. It did not really matter what the relationship was; a home was a home whoever lived in it, it was the same family no matter how attenuated the links of blood and lineage.

She parked the van carefully beside a large tin tub turned upside down in the yard. That would be the family bath. As she switched off the engine and opened her door, the front door of the house opened and a child of about ten peered out. Fanwell gestured to the child, who stepped out shyly, followed by a smaller child, a boy and then another boy.

Mma Ramotswe smiled at the girl. “How are you, little one?”

The child lowered her eyes, as was respectful. “I am very well, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe reached out and took her hand. It felt strangely dry, as the hands of children sometimes can. “And these are your brothers?”

The child nodded and then pointed to the smaller boy. “That one is my brother by another mother.”

The door opened and another girl came out-this one rather older, thirteen, perhaps, or fourteen. Mma Ramotswe noticed the early signs of womanhood and thought: if only she could be protected. But how could one do that in the absence of a mother and a father? She looked away. Somehow humanity got by; somehow children grew up in the most unpromising of surroundings, as in this cramped little house in this clutter of lanes and paths and tumbledown dwellings. And many of them, against all the odds, made something of their lives, studying by candlelight or by electric light dangerously stolen from the mains outside, poring over the books that could lead them out of this and into something better. Fanwell had done it: he must have had to battle to get the school certificate that meant that he could start a mechanics' apprenticeship. And if it had not been for Charlie, who had distracted him and led him astray, he would have completed the apprenticeship by now and would be earning enough, perhaps, to escape Old Naledi altogether.

Fanwell turned to the teenage girl. “Take the aunty into the house and make her some tea,” he said. “The aunty likes tea.”

The girl nodded and gestured for Mma Ramotswe to follow her.

“My grandmother will be back soon,” said Fanwell. “She will also look after you, Mma. In the meantime, I'll start on your van.”

Mma Ramotswe followed the girl into the house and found herself in a small, square room. At the far end, behind a tattered blue curtain, a doorway led into the back room, the sleeping quarters, she imagined. The front room, dimly lit by daylight admitted through a single window, was cluttered with the family's possessions: a tin trunk from which the clasp had fallen away, a table of varnished yellow wood, straight-backed chairs, an open cupboard with tins of food and cooking implements stacked on the shelves. Against the wall opposite the window stood a small electric stove-two hot plates and a tiny, rickety oven. This was home to… Mma Ramotswe thought: five young people, if one included Fanwell, and one grandmother. And she saw that there were six white enamel plates stacked on one of the shelves; six single plates on which all the family's food was served.

The girl produced a simple kettle from somewhere. It was already filled with water and she placed it delicately on the stove.

“It will not be long, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled at her. The smaller children, the girl and the two boys, had sidled into the room and were standing near the window, watching her.

“Shall I sit down here?” asked Mma Ramotswe, indicating one of the chairs.

The girl nodded. “That is my grandmother's chair, Mma,” she said. “But she will not mind. She can sit on one of the others.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at the other children. It was difficult to tell with certainty, but two of them looked very alike; the others were different. Brothers and sisters by other mothers, she thought. Of course, that applied to all of us, did it not? We were all brothers and sisters by different mothers.

She turned to the teenage girl. “Do you go to school?”

The girl nodded. “I am in Form Two.” There was a gravity about the way she spoke, her answers being delivered with precision and only after what seemed like a pause for consideration.

“And what is your best subject?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Let me guess? You are good at English. Am I right?”

The girl's eyes widened. “How could you tell, Mma? Yes, that is my best subject.”

Mma Ramotswe chuckled. “I am a detective, you see. I know how to find clues. And there are many clues in this place. I saw those two books on the shelf there. Those ones. An English dictionary and a book of stories. I thought: there is somebody in this house who is a keen reader. I could tell that. And those ones over there,” she nodded in the direction of the smaller children, “they are too small to be reading English dictionaries. And Fanwell… Well, he is a young man, and they do not read dictionaries either. So that meant Grandmother or you, and I decided that it must be you.”

The girl smiled. It was the first time that she had smiled, and Mma Ramotswe saw her face light up. “Fanwell told me that you are a detective, Mma,” the girl said. “He told me that you are a very clever lady.” She paused. “And he also said that he often helps you solve cases.”

Mma Ramotswe gave nothing away. “Of course he does,” she said. “Your brother is very useful.”

The kettle had now begun to boil, and the girl busied herself with the making of tea. The brew was thin and the milk powdered, but Mma Ramotswe was thirsty and it was welcome. As she began to sip the tea, the front door opened and the grandmother came in.

THEY SAT TOGETHER at the table, Fanwell's grandmother and Mma Ramotswe. The teenage girl who had made the tea and the younger children had been sent outside, while the grandmother and her visitor talked.

“I am from Thamaga,” said the old woman. “I was born there, the firstborn of my parents. Number one of seven. Three girls and four boys. There are three of us left, Mma, after all these years. Three.”

“You are still here,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That is a good thing.”

The grandmother acknowledged the truth of what Mma Ramotswe said. “Yes, it is. But then when you are old like me, you think that the whole world is changing. There are new people everywhere. New buildings. And all this rush-everybody is in a hurry. And you sit there and think: Why is everybody in a hurry? That will not make the crops grow any quicker, will it? It will not.

“Thamaga is a good place, and I was very happy there. I went to school and I was good at the things that they taught us. I can write, Mma. I can read too. I am not an illiterate. I have a Bible in the bedroom that I know a lot of by heart. I have read it many times. I can say much of it without reading. ‘In the beginning…’”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Yes, I have heard that.” And added, quickly, “Tell me what happened to you, Mma. Out in Thamaga. What happened?”

The old woman looked at her in surprise. Her eyes, Mma Ramotswe noticed, were unusually moist round the edges, as are the eyes of one who has looked too long into the smoke of a wood fire, smarting. “Nothing happened to me in Thamaga, Mma. Nothing.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “In all those years, Mma?”

The old woman's face creased with amusement. “I suppose that things happened. It's just that when you are living in a village, it seems at the time that there is nothing happening. You know how it is. There is the hot season. Then there are the rains. Then it gets cold. And then the hot weather starts again.

“And children are born,” she went on, “and they grow up and go away and more children are born. That is what happens in a place like Thamaga.”

Mma Ramotswe knew what she meant. It had been the same in Mochudi when she was a girl. Something had happened in her life because she had come to Gaborone and started the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, but there were those who had stayed. Nothing much had happened in their lives, and yet were they unhappier for that? She did not think so.

“I was married when I was sixteen,” said the old woman. “I did not really want to get married because I would have liked to have been a nurse, or an assistant to a nurse. They took girls at the Scottish hospital in Molepolole, the Livingstone Hospital. You know the place, Mma?”

“I know it,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Dr. Merriweather's hospital. When he was there. He is late now, but people still love him. Late people are still loved, aren't they, Mma?”

“Yes, they are. You are right. And that is the place. I could have gone there and they would have trained me, but my senior uncle was against it. He said that if I became a nurse I would go and work in South Africa and never come back, and then who would look after him and the others? So they made me marry. I think that they were interested in the cattle they would get for me too. In the lobola.

“There was a young man who was the nephew of a friend of my senior uncle-my own father was late, you see. So they introduced us-they brought this young man to the house and they sat and watched as we talked. The young man was very shy and he could not talk about anything. He looked at me as if he was trying to say, Sorry, this is not my idea. When he looked at me in that way, I knew that I would be able to love him. I did not like men who never thought about how a woman was feeling. This one was thinking of me. So I said to my senior uncle that he had found a very good young man and that I would behave as a good wife should and he should not worry that they would ask for their cattle back. That is what my uncle was really worried about, Mma.

“We were married and then almost straightaway my husband went off and got a job in Gaborone as a government driver. They were looking for drivers then, as the Government had just found diamonds and they had money to spend on cars. They bought many cars with the diamond money and they needed men to drive them.

“He was very popular with the government people, and they made him a Driver Class One. This meant that he could drive big government cars and not just the cars of small officials. Now and then he drove Seretse Khama himself, Mma, and then he also sometimes drove President Masire if the President's own driver was not well. President Masire used to like to talk to him about ostriches because he was very interested in them-the President was-and my husband knew something about ostriches. He did not like ostriches very much, but he never told the President that. That would have been rude, Mma.

“While he was doing all this driving for the Government, Mma, I stayed behind in Thamaga and brought up the children. We had two sons and two daughters. One of them was the mother of Fanwell. She is late now. The other girl is married to a man on that side”-she pointed in the direction of the border-“and we do not see her very much. There is something wrong, I think, but she will not say what it is. She is not happy, Mma. One of the boys went to Maun and worked in one of those places up there. He became late, and so did his wife. That meant that their children came to me. The other one went to Francistown. He is a clerk, a very important clerk, but he does not send us any money, Mma. Not one thebe.

“While I was staying in the village with my own children, all those years ago, my husband found another woman in Gaborone. I knew about that, Mma, but I said nothing. Some of my friends said to me that I should go and find that woman and poison her, but I said no, I would not do that. I have never poisoned anybody, Mma, and I would not poison even this bad woman who was seeing my husband and taking him away from me. Have you ever poisoned anybody, Mma? I do not think you have! When I see you I do not think: That is a poisoner. I do not think that, Mma.

“And then, Mma, after many years in Gaborone, my husband became late. And that is when I found out that he had had a child by this other woman, and that child, when she was fifteen, had her own child, who is one of those smaller children you have met here. And then she had another one. They are the granddaughters of that bad woman. Their own mother just went away. She left the girls with some neighbours and told them to get in touch with me because she had heard that I was the grandmother.

“So I had to come to Gaborone and sort out all these grandchildren who had nobody to look after them. I found this place, Mma-which may be small but is very comfortable. There is enough room for all of us if we are careful how we move about and do not bump into one another too much.

“When I was in Thamaga, Mma, I earned some money as a potter. You know that they have a pottery out there? You have seen their work, maybe. I was one of the ladies who made pots, very good pots, Mma. So when I came to Gaborone I thought that I could make some pots and sell them out at that shop, Botswana-craft; you may have seen it, Mma. They are kind people there, and they are very happy to take your work if they can sell it. They take some of my pots, but not too many, and I only earn a few pula from each one. Who wants Botswana pots these days, Mma, when there are so many other things for people to buy? And it is also hard to get the right dye here in Gaborone, Mma. Out there in Thamaga we had all the things that we needed-we just had to go and find them. We had good clay. We had many fine dyes from red earth and from plants that we knew. All of that was just given to us by God, and we did not have to pay for it. Here in Gaborone, there is nothing that is free, even the things that God gives to Botswana. Somebody comes along and puts a price on them. Then they say, No, that is twenty pula that one, and that one is fifty, and so on. One day they are going to put a price on the air itself, Mma, and say, No, you cannot breathe unless you give us forty pula for the air. Do you think air is free?”

She became silent. Mma Ramotswe looked into her eyes. The whites were a strange colour, slightly ochre perhaps; burst blood vessels, perhaps, a long time ago; rust; the dust of many years. Any of these could be the explanation.

The old woman drew breath. “Fanwell is such a good boy” she said. “He works very hard in the garage, and do you know something, Mma? Every pay-day he gives me all the money he gets from Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Every pula. That is how we live, Mma-all of us. It is only Fanwell's money that we have, and the few pula that I make from my pots. That is what keeps us, Mma. All of us.”

Mma Ramotswe sat quite still. All of us. Until you hear the whole story, until you dig deeper, and listen, she thought, you know only a tiny part of the goodness of the human heart.