Tears of the Giraffe

CHAPTER EIGHT THE CHILDREN'S TALE

YOU MUST understand, said Mma Potokwane, that although it is easy for us to criticize the ways of the Basarwa, we should think carefully before we do that. When you look at the life they lead, out there in the Kalahari, with no cattle of their own and no houses to live in; when you think about that and wonder how long you and I and other Batswana would be able to live like that, then you realize that these bushmen are remarkable people.

There were some of these people who wandered around on the edge of the Makadikadi Salt Pans, up on the road over to the Okavango. I don't know that part of the country very well, but I have been up there once or twice. I remember the first time I saw it: a wide, white plain under a white sky, with a few tall palm trees and grass that seemed to grow out of nothing. It was such a strange landscape that I thought I had wandered out of Botswana into some foreign land. But just a little bit farther on it changes back into Botswana and you feel comfortable again.

There was a band of Masarwa who had come up from the Kalahari to hunt ostriches. They must have found water in the salt pans and then wandered on towards one of the villages along the road to Maun. The people up there are sometimes suspicious of Basarwa, as they say that they steal their goats and will milk their cows at night if they are not watched closely.

This band had made a camp about two or three miles outside the village. They hadn't built anything, of course, but were sleeping under the bushes, as they often do. They had plenty of meat-having just killed several ostriches-and were happy to stay there until the urge came upon them to move.

There were a number of children and one of the women had just given birth to a baby, a boy. She was sleeping with him at her side, a little bit away from the others. She had a daughter, too, who was sleeping on the other side of her mother. The mother woke up, we assume, and moved her legs about to be more comfortable. Unfortunately there was a snake at her feet, and she rested her heel on its head. The snake bit her. That's how most snakebites occur. People are asleep on their sleeping mats and snakes come in for the warmth. Then they roll over onto the snake and the snake defends itself.

They gave her some of their herbs. They're always digging up roots and stripping bark off trees, but nothing like that can deal with a lebolobolo bite, which is what this must have been. According to the daughter, her mother died before the baby even woke up. Of course, they don't lose any time and they prepared to bury the mother that morning. But, as you might or might not know, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, when a Mosarwa woman dies and she's still feeding a baby, they bury the baby too. There just isn't the food to support a baby without a mother. That's the way it is.

The girl hid in the bush and watched them take her mother and her baby brother. It was sandy there, and all they could manage was a shallow grave, in which they laid her mother, while the other women wailed and the men sang something. The girl watched as they put her tiny brother in the grave too, wrapped in an animal skin. Then they pushed the sand over them both and went back to the camp.

The moment they had gone, the child crept out and scrabbled quickly at the sand. It did not take her long, and soon she had her brother in her arms. There was sand in the child's nostrils, but he was still breathing. She turned on her heels and ran through the bush in the direction of the road, which she knew was not too far away. A truck came past a short time later, a Government truck from the Roads Department. The driver slowed, and then stopped. He must have been astonished to see a young Mosarwa child standing there with a baby in her arms. Of course he could hardly leave her, even though he could not make out what she was trying to tell him. He was going back to Francistown and he dropped her off at the Nyangabwe Hospital, handing her over to an orderly at the gate.

They looked at the baby, who was thin, and suffering badly from a fungal disease. The girl herself had tuberculosis, which is not at all unusual, and so they took her in and kept her in a TB ward for a couple of months while they gave her drugs. The baby stayed in the maternity nursery until the girl was better. Then, they let them go. Beds on the TB ward were needed for other sick people and it was not the hospital's job to look after a Mosarwa girl with a baby. I suppose they thought that she would go back to her people, which they usually do.

One of the sisters at the hospital was concerned. She saw the girl sitting at the hospital gate and she decided that she had nowhere to go. So she took her home and let her stay in her backyard, in a lean-to shack that they had used for storage but which could be cleared out to provide a room of sorts. This nurse and her husband fed the children, but they couldn't take them into the family properly, as they had two children of their own and they did not have a great deal of money.

The girl picked up Setswana quite quickly. She found ways of making a few pula by collecting empty bottles from the edge of the road and taking them back to the bottle store for the deposit. She carried the baby on her back, tied in a sling, and never let him leave her sight. I spoke to the nurse about her, and I understand that although she was still a child herself, she was a good mother to the boy. She made his clothes out of scraps that she found here and there, and she kept him clean by washing him under the tap in the nurse's backyard. Sometimes she would go and beg outside the railway station, and I think that people sometimes took pity on them and gave them money, but she preferred to earn it if she could.

This went on for four years. Then, quite without warning, the girl became ill. They took her back to the hospital and they found that the tuberculosis had damaged the bones very badly. Some of them had crumbled and this was making it difficult for her to walk. They did what they could, but they were unable to prevent her from ending up unable to walk. The nurse scrounged around for a wheelchair, which she was eventually given by one of the Roman Catholic priests. So now she looked after the boy from the wheelchair, and he, for his part, did little chores for his sister.

The nurse and her husband had to move. The husband worked for a meat-packing firm and they wanted him down in Lobatse. The nurse had heard of the orphan farm, and so she wrote to me. I said that we could take them, and I went up to Francistown to collect them just a few months ago. Now they are with us, as you have seen.

That is their story, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. That is how they came to be here.

MR J.L.B. Matekoni said nothing. He looked at Mma Poto-kwane, who met his gaze. She had worked at the orphan farm for almost twenty years-she had been there when it had been started-and was inured to tragedy-or so she thought. But this story, which she had just told, had affected her profoundly when she had first heard it from the nurse in Francistown. Now it was having that effect on Mr J.L.B. Matekoni as well; she could see that.

"They will be here in a few moments," she said. "Do you want me to say that you might be prepared to take them?"

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni closed his eyes. He had not spoken to Mma Ramotswe about it and it seemed quite wrong to land her with something like this without consulting her first. Was this the way to start a marriage? To take a decision of such momentum without consulting one's spouse? Surely not.

And yet here were the children. The girl in her wheelchair, smiling up at him and the boy standing there so gravely, eyes lowered out of respect.

He drew in his breath. There were times in life when one had to act, and this, he suspected, was one of them.

"Would you children like to come and stay with me?" he said. "Just for a while? Then we can see how things go."

The girl looked to Mma Potokwane, as if for confirmation.

"Rra Matekoni will look after you well," she said. "You will be happy there."

The girl turned to her brother and said something to him, which the adults did not hear. The boy thought for a moment, and then nodded.

"You are very kind, Rra," she said. "We will be very happy to come with you."

Mma Potokwane clapped her hands.

"Go and pack, children," she said. "Tell your housemother that they are to give you clean clothes."

The girl turned her wheelchair round and left the room, accompanied by her brother.

"What have I done?" muttered Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, under his breath.

Mma Potokwane gave him his answer.

"A very good thing," she said.