The Kalahari Typing School For Men

CHAPTER THREE

MMA RAMOTSWE completed her shopping. Before the two orphans had come to stay, shopping had been an easy task and she found that she rarely had to get supplies more than once a week. Now it seemed that everything ran out shortly after she had replenished stocks. Only two days ago she had bought flour-a large bag, too-and now the flour was finished and the cake baked by the girl, Motholeli, had been all but consumed by her brother, Puso. That was a good sign, of course: boys should have good appetites, and it was natural for them to want to eat large amounts of cake and sweet things. As they grew older, they would move to meat, which was very important for a man. But all this food that was being consumed cost money, and had it not been for the generous contributions made by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni-contributions which in fact covered the entire cost of keeping the children-Mma Ramotswe would have begun to feel the pinch.

It was Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s idea to foster the children in the first place, and although she never regretted taking them in, she wished that he had consulted her first. It was not that she resented the fact that Motholeli was confined to a wheelchair and that she was now responsible for a handicapped child, it was just that she had imagined that something quite as important as this would have been the subject of some discussion. But it was not in Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s heart to say no-that was the problem. And she loved him all the more for that. Mma Silvia Potokwani, matron of the orphan farm, had understood that very well and, as usual, had been able to ensure the best possible arrangements for her orphans. She must have been planning for months to place the orphans with him, and of course she must have realised that they would end up living in Mma Ramotswe’s house in Zebra Drive rather than in Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s house near the old Botswana Defence Club. Of course, after the marriage (whenever that would be), they would all live together under one roof. The children had already been asking about that, and she had told them that she was waiting for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to decide on a date.

“He does not rush things,” she had explained. “Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is a very careful man. He likes to do things slowly.”

Puso had seemed impatient, and she had realised that his need was for a father. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni would be that in due course, but in the meantime the boy, who had never had a parent, would be wondering whether he ever would. At the age of six, a week was a long time; a month would be interminable.

Motholeli, who had suffered so much and who had been so brave, understood. She had been used to waiting and of course it took her much longer to do anything, manoeuvring her wheelchair with difficulty through doorways that always seemed too small or along corridors that ended in awkward steps. Only now and then did she seem to register disappointment, and that was never for more than a few moments. So when Mma Ramotswe returned from her shopping and struggled into the kitchen, laden with brown paper bags, she was surprised to find that there was no cheerful greeting from Motholeli, only a downcast look.

She lowered her parcels onto the table. “So much shopping,” she said. “Lots of meat. A sort of chicken.” She paused. She knew that Motholeli liked pumpkins. “And a pumpkin,” she said, adding: “A big one. Very yellow.”

At first the girl said nothing. Then, when she replied, her voice was flat: “That is good.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at her. Motholeli had left that morning in good spirits, and so it must have been something which had happened at school. She remembered her own school days and the ups and downs which she had experienced. They had been such little dramas-at least when looked at from her current perspective-but they had seemed so grave and frightening at the time. She remembered the occasion when the head teacher of her school at Mochudi had tried to flush out a thief. One of the children had been stealing, and the teacher had summoned every child into his office and had insisted that he or she place a hand on the large Setswana Bible which he kept on his table. Then each child had been asked to say, beneath the head teacher’s piercing gaze: I swear that I am not a thief.

“Nobody who is innocent has anything to fear,” the teacher had announced before the whole school, assembled on the dusty playing field. “But the person who lies with his hand on the Bible will be struck down. That is one thing that is sure. Maybe not straightaway, but later, when you are not expecting it. That is when the Lord will strike you down.”

The silence had been complete. She had looked up into the sky but had seen only utter emptiness. It was undoubtedly true, of course; people were struck by lightning, and it must have been because they deserved it: thieves, perhaps, or even worse. She had no doubt but that the thief, whoever it was, would know this just as she did and would falter before he uttered the fateful words. But when the last pupil had filed out of the office and the head teacher had come out looking angry, she realised that she had been wrong and that one of their number was now in mortal danger. Who could it be? She had her suspicions, of course; everybody knew that Elijah Sebekedi could not be trusted, and although nobody had actually seen him stealing anything, how could he afford to buy those tins of condensed milk which he drank so conspicuously on his way home from school? His father, as was well known, was a drunkard and spent all his money on traditional beer, leaving nothing for his family. The children survived on handouts; the shoes they wore, the clothes, were recognised by the other children as those which they had abandoned, thinking that no more wear could be extracted from them. So there was only one explanation for Elijah’s tins of condensed milk.

She thought about him that night as she lay on her sleeping mat, watching the square of moonlight move slowly across the wall opposite her bedroom window. The rainy season was not far away, and there would be storms. Elijah Sebekedi should be worried about that; there would be lightning about. She closed her eyes, and then, her heart pounding, she opened them again. She herself had lied! Only a week ago she had helped herself to a doughnut which she had found in the kitchen. She had been unable to resist it and had felt immediately guilty after she had finished licking the last of the sugar off her fingers. She had said I swear that I am not a thief, blatantly, falsely, and had repeated it as the head teacher had not heard her the first time that she had uttered those fateful, damning words. And now she would be struck by lightning; there was no escape.

– -

SHE DID not sleep well, and the next morning she was silent as she ate her breakfast in the kitchen. Mma Ramotswe had lost her mother when she was still young and was looked after by her father and several of his female relatives who took it in turns to keep house for them. There was a seemingly endless supply of these relatives-competent, cheerful women who appeared to look forward to their turn to come to Mochudi and to rearrange and reverse everything which their predecessor had done in the house. These were house-proud women, who kept the yard spotless, the sand brushed and raked every day, the chicken manure cleared away and deposited on the melon patch; women who understood the importance of scouring your pans until the black was scraped away and the metal below was shining. These were not small things. These were the things which showed children growing up in the house how they should live their lives as clean, upright people.

Now, sitting at the kitchen table with her father and his aunt from Palapye, watching the soft rays of the early morning sun streaming in through the door, Precious Ramotswe was aware that if it clouded over-as it might-and if there were lightning-as there might be-then she might not be sitting here the next morning. Of course there was only one thing to do, which was to confess, which she did, there and then to her father and the aunt, and Obed Ramotswe, after listening to her with astonishment, had turned to his aunt, and she had laughed and said: “But that was meant for you, that doughnut. You did not steal it.” And at this, overcome with relief, Precious had burst into tears and told the adults of the fate that awaited Elijah. Obed Ramotswe exchanged glances with his aunt.

“That is a very unkind thing to do to children,” he said. “That poor boy will not be struck by lightning. Maybe he will learn one day not to be a thief. It is for his father to teach him that, but he is always drinking.” He paused. It was a grave thing to criticise a teacher, especially in front of a child, but the words came out before he could stop them: “The Lord is more likely to strike the head teacher than that boy.”

Mma Ramotswe had not thought of this incident for years, and now, looking at Motholeli, she wondered what local torment was causing her unhappiness. People said that school days were happy, but they often were not. Often it was like being in prison; wary of older children and terrified of teachers, unable to talk to anybody about troubles because you thought that there would be nobody who would understand. Perhaps things had changed for the better, and in some ways they had. Teachers were not allowed to beat children as they did in the past, although, Mma Ramotswe reflected, there were some boys-and indeed some young men-who might have been greatly improved by moderate physical correction. The apprentices, for example: would it help if Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni resorted to physical chastisement-nothing severe, of course-but just an occasional kick in the seat of the pants while they were bending over to change a tyre or something like that? The thought made her smile. She would even offer to administer the kick herself, which she imagined might be oddly satisfying, as one of the apprentices, the one who still kept on about girls, had a largeish bottom which she thought would be quite comfortable to kick. How enjoyable it would be to creep up behind him and kick him when he was least expecting it, and then to say: Let that be a lesson! That was all one would have to say, but it would be a blow for women everywhere.

But those were not serious thoughts and would not help the immediate problem, which was to find out what was troubling Motholeli and making her so palpably miserable.

Mma Ramotswe put away the last of her groceries and then put on the kettle to make a pot of red bush tea. Then she sat down.

“You’re unhappy,” she said simply. “And it’s something at school, isn’t it?”

Motholeli shook her head. “No,” she said. “I am not.”

“That is not true,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You are a happy girl normally. You are famous for your happiness. And now you are almost crying. I do not have to be a detective to know that.”

The girl looked down at the ground.

“I have no mother,” she said quietly. “I am a girl who has no mother.”

Something caught at Mma Ramotswe’s throat: a feeling of sudden, overwhelming sympathy. So that was it. She was missing her mother; of course she was. She was missing her mother in exactly the same way in which she, Precious Ramotswe, had missed her own mother, whom she had never known, and in the same way, too, that she missed her father, every day of her life, every day, her good, kind father, Obed Ramotswe, of whom she was so proud. Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet and crossed the kitchen floor. Now she crouched down and embraced the girl.

“Of course you have a mother, Motholeli,” she whispered. “Your mummy is there, in heaven, and she is watching you, watching you every day. And I’ll tell you what she’s thinking: she’s thinking, I am very proud of that fine girl, my daughter. I am very proud of how hard she is working and how she is looking after her little brother. That is what she is thinking.”

She felt the girl’s shoulder heave beneath her and she felt the warm tears of the child against her own skin.

“You mustn’t cry,” she said. “You mustn’t be unhappy. She would not want you to be unhappy, would she?”

“She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care what happens to me.”

Mma Ramotswe caught her breath. “But you mustn’t say that. That is not true. It is not. Of course she cares.”

“That is not what this girl is telling me at school,” said Motholeli. “She says that I am a girl who has no mother because my mother did not like me and left. That is what she says.”

“And who is this girl?” asked Mma Ramotswe angrily. “Who is she to tell you these lies?”

“She is a very popular girl at school. She is a rich girl. She has many friends, and they all believe what she says.”

“Her name?” said Mma Ramotswe. “What is the name of this popular girl?”

Motholeli gave the name, and Mma Ramotswe immediately knew. For a moment she said nothing, then, wiping the tears away from Motholeli’s cheek, she spoke to her.

“We will talk about this more later on,” she said. “For now, you just remember that everything that this girl has said to you-everything-is just not true. It doesn’t matter who she is. It doesn’t matter one little bit. You lost your mother because she was sick. She was a good woman, I know that. I have asked about her, and that is what Mma Potokwani told me. She said she was a strong woman who was kind to people. You remember that. You remember that and be proud of it. Do you understand what I am saying?”

The girl looked up. Then she nodded.

“And there is something else you must remember,” Mma Ramotswe said. “There is something else that you must remember for the rest of your life. Sir Seretse Khama said that every person in Botswana, every person, is of equal value. The same. That means you, too. Everyone. You may be an orphan girl, but you are as good as anybody else. There is nobody who can look at you and say, I am better than you. Do you understand that?”

Mma Ramotswe waited until Motholeli had nodded before she rose to her feet. “And in the meantime,” she said, “we should start cooking this fine pumpkin so that when Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni comes to have dinner with us this evening, we shall have a good meal ready for him on the table. Would you like that?”

Motholeli smiled. “I would like that very much, Mma.”

“Good,” said Mma Ramotswe.

MR. J.L.B. Matekoni left the garage at five o’clock and drove straight to the house in Zebra Drive. He liked the early evening, when the heat had gone out of the sun and it was pleasant to walk about in the last hour or so before dusk set in. This evening he was planning to spend some time clearing Mma Ramotswe’s vegetable garden at the back of the house before he would join her for a cup of bush tea on the verandah. There they would catch up on the day’s events before going in for dinner. There was always something to discuss; information which Mma Ramotswe had picked up while doing her shopping or items from that day’s Botswana Daily News (except for football news, in which Mma Ramotswe had no interest). They always agreed with one another; Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni trusted Mma Ramotswe’s judgement on matters of human nature and local politics, while she deferred to him on business issues and agriculture. Was the price of cattle too low at the moment, or was it reasonable enough, given the price that the canning factory and the butchers were prepared to pay? Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni would know the answer to that, and in Mma Ramotswe’s experience he was always right on these issues. What about that new politician, the one who had just been made a junior minister; was he to be trusted, or was he interested only in himself or, at a pinch, in the welfare of his own people in the town he came from? Only in himself, Mma Ramotswe would say without hesitation; look at him, just look at the way that he holds his hands clasped in front of him when he talks. That’s always a sign; always.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni parked his car just inside the gate. He liked to leave it there, allowing ample room for Mma Ramotswe to drive past in her tiny white van, if she needed to go out. Then, changing from his garage shoes, which were always covered in oil, to the scuffed and dusty suede veldschoens that he liked to wear outside, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni made his way to the back of the yard where he had planted several rows of beans under an awning of shade netting. In a dry country like Botswana, shade netting made all the difference to a plant’s chances, keeping the drying rays of the sun off the vulnerable green leaves and allowing the earth to retain a little of any precious moisture left over from watering. The ground was always so thirsty; water poured upon it was soaked up with a parched eagerness that left little trace. But people persisted in spite of this and tried to make small patches of green amid the brown.

The yard in Zebra Drive was considerably larger than neighbouring plots. Mma Ramotswe had always intended to clear it entirely but had never got round to cutting back the tangle of bush-stunted thorn trees, high grass, and sundry shrubs-which overgrew the back section of her plot. Behind it was a small stretch of wasteland, also overgrown, across which an informal path wound its way. People liked to use this as a shortcut to town, and in the morning one might hear whistling or singing from men on bicycles as they rode along the path. Babies were conceived here, too, especially on Saturday evenings, and Mma Ramotswe had often thought that at least some of the children whom she saw playing games there had been drawn back by some strange homing instinct to revisit the place where they had started out.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni filled an old watering can from the stand-pipe at the side of the house. Inside the kitchen, Mma Ramotswe heard the tap running and looked out of the window. She waved to her fiancé, who waved back, mouthing a few words of greeting to her, before he carried the can off to the vegetable plot. Mma Ramotswe smiled to herself, and thought, Here I am at last, with a good man, who is prepared to work in the garden and grow beans for me. It was a comforting thought, and it made her feel warm with pleasure as she watched his retreating form disappear behind the clump of acacias that masked the rear portion of the yard.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni stooped under the shade netting and began to pour water, gently, almost dribbling it, against the lower stem of each bean plant. Every drop of water was precious in Botswana, and one would have to be foolhardy to use a hose to splash water all over the place. It was even more effective, if one had the resources, to set up a drip feed system, in which the water would travel down from a central reservoir on a thin line of cotton thread which would dip down into the ground at the plant’s roots. That was the best water husbandry of all: tiny trickles of water delivered to the roots, minuscule drop by minuscule drop. Perhaps one day I shall do that, thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Perhaps I shall do that when I am too old to fix cars anymore and have sold Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Then I shall be a farmer, as all my people have been before me. I shall go back to my lands, way out there on the edge of the Kalahari, and sit under a tree and watch my melons grow in the sun.

He bent down to examine one of the bean plants, which had become entangled in the string up which it grew. As he gently redirected the plant’s stem, there was a sudden noise behind him; a little thud, as of a stone hitting something, and then a dry, scrabbling noise, and he spun round immediately. A noise like that could easily be a snake; one had to be constantly on the watch for snakes, which might be lying anywhere and might suddenly rear up and strike. A cobra would be bad enough-and he had experienced several rather-too-close encounters with them-but what if it was a mamba, angered by a disturbance? Mambas were aggressive snakes which did not like people treading on their ground, and which would attack with real anger. A bite from a mamba was rarely survivable, as their poison travelled so quickly through the body and paralysed the lungs and the heart.

It was not a snake but a bird, which had fluttered down from the bough of a tree and had flown, at a strange angle, down against the shade netting. Now it had fallen to the ground and was beating its wings against the sand, raising a small cloud of dust. After a few struggling movements, it lay still, a hoopoe, with its gorgeous striped plumage and its tiny crown of black and white feathers sticking up like the headdress of some miniature chieftain.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni reached down to the bird, which watched his approaching hand with a liquid stare, but which seemed unable to move any longer. Its breast rose under the feathers, almost imperceptibly, and then was still. He picked it up still warm but now limp, and he turned it over. On its other side, the tiny eye-a black speck like the pip of a papaw-was hanging out of its socket, and there was a red patch in the plumage where the bird had been struck by a stone.

“Oh,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, and then again, “oh.”

He laid the bird down on the ground and looked about him, out into the scrub bush.

“You skellums,” he shouted. “I saw this! I saw you kill this bird!”

Boys, he thought. It would be boys with their catapults, hiding in the bushes and killing birds, not to eat, of course, but just killing them. Killing doves or pigeons was one thing; they could be eaten, but nobody could eat a hoopoe, and who could possibly wish to kill such a friendly little bird? You simply did not kill hoopoes.

Of course it would be impossible to catch the boys in question; they would have run away by now, or they would be hiding in the bush laughing at him behind their hands. There was nothing to be done but to toss the little carcass away. Rats would find it, or maybe a snake, and make a meal of it. This little death would be a windfall for somebody.

WHEN MR. J.L.B. Matekoni went back to the house, discouraged by the hoopoe’s death, and by the condition of the beans, and by everything, he found Mma Ramotswe waiting for him at the kitchen door.

“Have you seen Puso?” she asked. “He was playing out in the yard. But now it is dinnertime and he has not come back. You may have heard me calling him.”

“I have not seen him,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I have been out at the back…” He stopped.

“And?” said Mma Ramotswe. “Is he back there?”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni hesitated for a moment.

“I think he is,” he said gravely. “I think he is using a catapult out there.”

They both went out to the vegetable patch and peered into the bush on the other side of the fence.

“Puso,” called out Mma Ramotswe. “We know that you are hiding. You come out or I shall come and get you myself.”

They waited for a few moments. Then Mma Ramotswe called out again.

“Puso! You are there! We know you are there!”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni thought he saw a movement in the high grass. It was a good place for a boy to hide, but it would be easy enough to go and get him out if they had to.

“Puso!” shouted Mma Ramotswe. “You are there! Come out!”

“I am not here.” The boy’s voice was very clear. “I am not.”

“You are a rascal,” said Mma Ramotswe. “How can you say you are not there? Who is speaking if it is not you?”

There was a further silence, and then the branches of a bush parted and the small boy crawled out.

“He killed a hoopoe with his catapult,” whispered Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I saw it.”

Mma Ramotswe drew in her breath as the boy approached her, his head down, looking steadfastly at the ground.

“Go to your room, Puso,” she said. “Go to your room and stay there until we call you.”

The boy looked up. His face was streaked with tears.

“I hate you,” he said. Then he turned to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “And I hate you, too.”

The words seemed to hang in the air between them, but the boy now dashed past the two astonished adults, running back towards the house, not looking back at Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni as he ran.