The Full Cupboard of Life

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

MMA RAMOTSWE surveyed the House of Hope. It was a rather grand name for a modest bungalow which had been built in the early seventies, at a time when Gaborone was a small town, inching out from the cluster of buildings around Government Headquarters and the small square of shops nearby. These houses had been built for government employees or for expatriates who came to the country on short-term contracts. They were comfortable, and were large by the standards of most people’s houses, but it seemed ambitious to use them for institutions, such as the House of Hope. But there was no choice, she imagined: larger buildings simply were not available, least of all to charities, which would have to scrimp and save to meet their costs.

There was a large garden, though, and this had been well-tended. In addition to a stand of healthy-looking paw-paw trees at the back, there were several clusters of bougainvillea and a mopipi tree. A vegetable garden, rather like the vegetable garden which Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had established in Mma Ramotswe’s own yard, appeared to be growing beans and carrots with some success, although Mma Ramotswe reflected that in the case of carrots one could never really tell until one pulled them out of the ground. There were all sorts of insects which competed with us for carrots, and often what appeared from above to be a healthy plant would reveal itself as riddled with holes once pulled out of the soil.

There was a verandah to the side of the house, and somebody had thoughtfully placed shade netting over the side of this. That would be a good place to sit, thought Mma Ramotswe, and one might even drink tea there, on a hot afternoon, and feel the sun on one’s face, but filtered by the shade netting. And then the thought occurred to her that all of Gaborone, the whole town, might be covered with shade netting, held aloft on great poles, and that this would keep the town cool and hold in the water which people put on their plants. It would be comfortable under this shade netting in summer, and then when winter came, and the air was cooler, they could roll back the shade netting to let in the winter sun, which would warm them, like the smile of an old friend. It was such a good idea, and it would surely not be too expensive for a country that had all those diamonds, but she knew that nobody would ever take it seriously. So they would continue to complain about the hot weather when it was hot and about the cold weather when it was cold.

The front door of the House of Hope opened immediately into the living room. This was a large room for that style of house, but the immediate and overwhelming impression it gave Mma Ramotswe was one of clutter. There were three or four chairs in the centre of the room-tightly arranged in a circle-and around them there were tables, storage boxes, and, here and there, a suitcase. On the wall, fixed with drawing pins, were pictures ripped from magazines; pictures of families and of mothers and children; of Mother Teresa with her characteristic headscarf; of Nelson Mandela waving to a crowd; and of a line of African nuns, all clad in white, walking down a path through thick undergrowth, their hands joined in prayer. Mma Ramotswe’s eye dwelt on the picture of the nuns. Where was the photograph taken, and where were these ladies going? They looked so peaceful, she thought, that perhaps it did not matter whether they were going anywhere, or nowhere in particular. People sometimes walked simply because walking was an enjoyable thing to do, and better than standing still, perhaps, if that was all you otherwise had to do. Sometimes she herself walked around her garden for no reason, and found it very relaxing, as perhaps it was for those nuns.

“You are interested in the pictures,” said Mr Bobologo, behind her. “We think that it is important that these bar girls should be reminded of a better life. They can sit here and look at the pictures.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. She was not convinced that it would be much fun for a bar girl, or for anybody else for that matter, to be sitting on one of those chairs in that crowded room, looking at these pictures from the magazines. But then it would be better than listening to Mr Bobologo, she thought.

Mr Bobologo now came to Mma Ramotswe’s side and pointed in the direction of the corridor that led off the living room. “I will be happy to show you the dormitories,” he said. “We may find some of the bad girls in their rooms.”

Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. It was not very tactful of him to call them bad girls, even if they were. People rose to the descriptions of themselves, and it might have been better, she thought, to call them young ladies, in the hope that they might behave as young ladies behaved. But then, to be realistic, they probably would not behave that way, as it took a great deal to change somebody’s ways.

The corridor was tidy enough, with only a small bookcase along one wall and the floor well-polished with that fresh-smelling polish that Mma Ramotswe’s maid, Rose, so liked to use. They stopped outside a half-open bedroom door and Mr Bobologo knocked upon this before he pushed it open.

Mma Ramotswe looked inside. There were two bunk-beds in the room, both of them triple-deckers. The top bed was just below the ceiling, barely allowing enough space for anybody to fit in. Mma Ramotswe reflected that she herself would never fit in that space, but then these girls were younger, and some of them might be quite small.

There were three girls in the room, two lying fully clothed on the lower bunks and one wearing a dressing gown, and sitting on a middle bunk, her legs hanging down over the edge. As Mr Bobologo and Mma Ramotswe entered the room, they stared at them, not with any great interest, but with a rather vacant look.

“This lady is a visitor,” Mr Bobologo announced, somewhat obviously, thought Mma Ramotswe.

One of the girls muttered something, which may have been a greeting but which was difficult to make out. The other one on the lower bunk nodded her head, while the girl sitting on the middle bunk managed a weak smile.

“You have a nice house here,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Are you happy?”

The girls exchanged glances.

“Yes,” said Mr Bobologo. “They are very happy.”

Mma Ramotswe watched the girls, who did not appear inclined to contradict Mr Bobologo.

“And do you get good food here, ladies?” she asked.

“Very good food,” said Mr Bobologo. “These good-time bar girls do not eat properly. They just drink dangerous liquor. When they are here they are given good, Botswana cooking. The food is very healthy.”

“It is good to hear you telling me all this,” Mma Ramotswe said, pointedly addressing her remark to the girls.

“That is all right,” said Mr Bobologo. “We are happy to talk to visitors.” He touched Mma Ramotswe’s elbow and pointed out into the corridor. “I must show you the kitchen,” he said. “And we must allow these girls to get on with their work.”

It was not very apparent to Mma Ramotswe what this work was, and she had to suppress a smile as they walked back down the corridor towards the kitchen. He really was a most irritating man, this Mr Bobologo, with his tendency to speak for others and his one-track mind. Mma Holonga had struck Mma Ramotswe as being a reasonable woman, and yet she was seriously entertaining Mr Bobologo as a suitor, which seemed very strange. Surely Mma Holonga, with her wealth and position, could find somebody better than this curious teacher with his ponderous, didactic style.

They now stood at the door of the kitchen, in which two young women, barefoot and wearing light pink housecoats, were chopping vegetables on a large wooden chopping board. A pot of stew was boiling on the stove-boiling too vigorously, thought Mma Ramotswe-and a large cup of tea was cooling on the table. It would be good to be offered tea, she thought longingly, and that very cup looked just right.

“These girls are chopping vegetables,” said Mr Bobologo solemnly. “And there is stew for our meal tonight.”

“So I see,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And I see, too, that they have just made tea.”

“It is better for them to drink tea than strong liquor,” intoned Mr Bobologo, looking disapprovingly at one of the girls, who cast her eyes downwards, in shame.

“Those are my views too,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Tea refreshes. It clears the mind. Tea is good at any time of the day, but especially at mid-day, when it is so hot.” She paused, and then added, “As it is today.”

“You are right, Mma,” said Mr Bobologo. “I am a great drinker of tea. I cannot understand why anybody would want to drink anything else when there is tea to be had. I have never been able to understand that.”

Mma Ramotswe now used an expression which is common in Setswana and which indicates understanding, and firm endorsement of what another has said. “Eee, Rra,” she said, with great depth of feeling, drawing out the vowels. If anything could convey to this man that she needed a cup of tea, this would. But it did not.

“This habit of drinking coffee is a very bad thing,” went on Mr Bobologo. “Tea is better for the heart than coffee is. People who drink coffee strain their hearts. Tea has a calming effect on the heart. It makes the heart go more slowly. Thump, thump. That is what the heart should sound like. I have always said that.”

“Yes,” agreed Mma Ramotswe, weakly. “That is very true.”

“That is why I am in favour of tea,” pronounced Mr Bobologo with an air of finality, as might a speaker at a kgotla meeting make his concluding statement.

They stood there in silence. Mr Bobologo looked at the girls, who were still chopping vegetables with an air of studied concentration. Mma Ramotswe looked at the cup of tea. And the girls looked at the vegetables.

AFTER THEY had finished inspecting the kitchen-which was very clean, Mma Ramotswe noticed-they went out and sat on the verandah. There was still no tea, and when Mma Ramotswe, in a last desperate bid, mentioned that she was thirsty, a glass of water was called for. She sipped on this in a resigned way, imagining that it was bush tea, which helped slightly, but not a great deal.

“Now that you have seen the House of Hope,” said Mr Bobologo, “you can ask me anything you like about it. Or you can tell me what you think. I don’t mind. We have nothing to hide in the House of Hope.”

Mma Ramotswe lifted her glass to her lips, noticing the greasy fingerprints around its rim, the fingerprints of those girls in the kitchen, she imagined. But this did not concern her. We all have fingerprints, after all.

“I think that this is a very good place,” she began. “You are doing very good work.”

“Yes, I am,” said Mr Bobologo.

Mma Ramotswe looked out at the garden, at the rows of beans. A large black dung beetle was optimistically rolling a tiny trophy, a fragment of manure from the vegetable beds, back towards its home somewhere-a small bit of nature struggling with another small bit of nature, but as important as anything else in the world.

She turned to Mr Bobologo. “I was wondering, Rra,” she began. “I was wondering why the girls come here. And why do they stay, if they want to be bar girls in the first place?”

Mr Bobologo nodded. This was clearly the obvious question to ask. “Some of them are very young and are sent here by the social work department or the police when they see them going into bars. Those girls have to stay, or the police will take them back to their village.

“Then there are the other bad girls, the ones our people meet down at the bus station or outside the bars. They may have nowhere to stay. They may be hungry. They may have been beaten up by some man. They are ready to come here then.”

Mma Ramotswe listened carefully. The House of Hope might be a rather dispiriting place, but it was better than the alternative.

“This is very interesting. Most of us are doing nothing about these things. You are doing something. That is very good.” She paused. “But how did you come to do this work, Rra? Why do you give up all your time to this thing? You are a busy teacher, and you have much to do at the school. Instead, you very kindly come and give up all your time to this House of Hope.”

Mr Bobologo thought for a moment. Mma Ramotswe noticed that his hands were clasped together; her question had unsettled him.

“I will tell you something, Mma,” he said after a few moments. “I would not like you to speak about it, please. Will you give me your word that you will not speak about it?”

Instinctively Mma Ramotswe nodded, immediately realising that this would put her in difficulty if he said something that she needed to report to her client. But she had agreed to keep his secret, and she would honour that.

Mr Bobologo spoke quietly. “Something happened to me, Mma. Something happened some years ago, and I have not forgotten this thing. I had a daughter, you see, by my wife who is late. She was our first born, and our only child. I was very proud of her, as only a father can be proud. She was clever and did well at Gaborone Secondary School.

“Then one day she came back from school, and she was a different girl. Just like that. She paid no attention to me and she started to go out at night. I tried to keep her in and she would scream at me and stamp her feet. I did not know what to do. I could not raise a hand to her, as there was no mother, and a father does not strike a motherless child. I tried to reason with her, and she just said that I was an old man and I did not understand the things that she now understood.

“And then she left. She was just sixteen when this happened. She left, and I looked everywhere and asked everybody about her. Until one day I heard that she had been seen over the border, down in Mafikeng, and that this place where she had been seen, this place…” He faltered, and Mma Ramotswe reached out to him, in a gesture of sympathy and reassurance.

“You can carry on when you are ready, Rra,” she said. But she already knew what he was going to say and he need not have continued.

“This place was a bar down there. I went there and my heart was hammering within me. I could not believe that my daughter would be in such a place. But she was, and she did not want to talk to me. I cried out to her and a man with a broken nose, a young man in a smart suit, a tsotsi type, came and threatened me. He said,Go home, uncle. Your daughter is not your property. Go home, or pay for one of these girls, like everybody else. Those were his words, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe was silent. Her hand was on his shoulder, and it remained there.

Mr Bobologo raised his head and looked up into the sky, high above the shade netting. “And so I said to myself that I would work to help these girls, because there are other fathers, just like me, who have this awful thing happen to them. These men are my brothers, Mma. I hope that you understand that.”

Mma Ramotswe swallowed. “I understand very well,” she said. “I understand. Your heart is broken, Rra. I understand that.”

“It is broken inside me,” echoed Mr Bobologo. “You are right about that, Mma.”

There was not much else to be said, and they made their way down the path to Mma Ramotswe’s tiny white van, parked under a tree. But as they walked, Mma Ramotswe decided to ask another question, more by way of making conversation than to elicit information.

“What are your plans for the House of Hope, Rra?”

Mr Bobologo turned and looked back at the house. “We are going to build an extension there at the side,” he said. “We shall have new showers and a room where the girls can learn sewing. That is what we are going to do.”

“That will be expensive,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Extensions always seem to cost more than the house itself. These builders are greedy men.”

Mr Bobologo laughed. “But I will shortly be in a position to pay,” he said. “I think that I may be a rich man before too long.”

Had Mma Ramotswe been less experienced than she was, had she not been the founder of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, this remark would have caused her to falter, to miss her step. But she was an experienced woman, whose job had shown her all of human life, and so she appeared quite unperturbed by what he had said. But these last few words that Mr Bobologo uttered-every one of them-fell into the pond of memory with a resounding splash.