The Slice of No.1 Celebration Storybook: Fifteen years with Mma Ramotswe (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) Read online

  ‘But you have not come to hear me, ladies,’ she went on. ‘I have many things to say on the subject of tonight’s talk, but you have not come to hear my views on this issue. It is Mma Ramotswe whom you have come to hear. Is that not so?’

  Again there were murmurs of agreement. ‘So in that case,’ said the organiser, ‘I shall ask Mma Ramotswe to speak to you. And the subject of her talk is an important one. It is “The Problem with Men”.’

  ‘No,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘It is “The Problem of Men”.’

  The organiser looked at her notes and then at Mma Ramotswe. ‘It says here that it is “The Problem with Men”. But it is your talk, Mma, and I must not interfere. You can decide what your talk is to be called.’

  ‘“The Problem of Men”,’ said Mma Ramotswe firmly. ‘That is the title of my talk.’

  ‘That is fine then,’ said the organiser. ‘“The Problem of Men”. That is also an important topic. You must speak on it, Mma. The ladies did not come here to hear the two of us discussing the title. You are the one who must speak.’

  ‘That is true,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘That is why I am trying to speak.’

  ‘Then you must speak,’ said the organiser. ‘I have nothing further to say.’

  ‘I shall begin then,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

  ‘Good,’ said the organiser.

  Mma Ramotswe took a step forward and placed her hands on the table which separated her from her audience. She looked out at the ladies.

  ‘Good evening,’ she said.

  Several of the ladies returned her greeting. Others smiled, gazing at Mma Ramotswe expectantly.

  ‘Now,’ said Mma Ramotswe, looking over the heads of the front rows to those sitting in the back. ‘There are many ladies who wonder what is wrong with men. Ladies have been asking this question for many years and they have not yet found the answer. Sometimes there are ladies who think that they have found the answer, but when you ask them what this answer is, they cannot give it to you. That is the problem with this question. There is no answer.’

  She paused. There was silence in the room, apart from some commotion in one corner, where one of the ladies had dropped a purse on the floor and was struggling to recover it from under her chair.

  Mma Ramotswe considered what to say next. She had imagined that she might talk about some of her cases, ones where men had been shown to have behaved badly, but now that she came to order her thoughts, her mind was drawing a complete blank. There were so many cases of this sort that they seemed to merge into one another. There was the case of the Government Man, who was arrogant and had had to be taught a lesson of humility. There was the case of the man who had let a girl down as a young man, not much more than a boy really, and then regretted it very much later on. At least he had tried to set things right. There was the case of the man who was carrying on affairs with two ladies at the same time and had been unmasked by some clever work on the part of Mma Makutsi. All of these cases were instances of masculine bad behaviour, and surely it would be easy to tell stories on that topic.

  But then she pictured the face of Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, that great mechanic, who was capable of such kindness and who that very evening had offered to do the washing up. She remembered how he had fixed her tiny white van for her even before they had become engaged to be married. She remembered the many acts of kindness that he had carried out for Mma Potokwani, the matron at the orphan farm. She remembered how he had fixed the water pump at the Orphan Farm time after time, nursing it back to health in circumstances when a lesser mechanic – and a lesser man – would have condemned it out of hand.

  And then she thought of her father Obed Ramotswe, a miner who had scrimped and saved in order to build a future for her. He had taught her about the old Botswana values and told her of how he had met Seretse Khama himself, first President of Botswana and Paramount Chief. And of how he had shaken the hand of Khama when he had paid a visit to Mochudi. There was not a day, not one, when she did not think about her father and how she would love him to be able to see how well she had done and how happy she was with Mr J. L. B. Matekoni.

  She returned her gaze to the audience before her. Two ladies in the front row were staring at her, and one was whispering to the other.

  Mma Ramotswe began to speak again. ‘I had come here tonight to talk about all the problems that men create for women. These problems are very big, and we all know what they are. We know about the men who are violent, the men who are abusive, the men who spend all the family money on drink. We know about those.’

  The audience became perfectly quiet. The women in the front row who had been whispering to one another stopped now.

  ‘But then,’ said Mma Ramotswe, ‘I have just been thinking about the good men I know. And there are many good men. In fact, the more I think of it, the more I realise that there may be more good men than bad men. What do you think, ladies? Are there more good men than bad men?’

  For a few moments nobody spoke. Then a woman at the back stood up and said, ‘I think that there are many, many good men. And I think that even the men who do not seem so good have a good side to them, and you can find that side if you look hard enough.’

  ‘Yes,’ said a woman from somewhere in the middle. ‘What my sister has just said is right. There are many good men. I do not think that there is a problem with men.’

  ‘Or a problem of men,’ interjected Mma Ramotswe.

  ‘No. Nor that.’

  ‘So perhaps we should end the meeting on that note,’ said Mma Ramotswe, sitting down on the chair behind the table.

  The organiser stood up and clapped her hands once more.

  ‘Ladies, this has been a very interesting evening,’ she said. ‘We have decided that we should not see men as a problem. That is a good decision to have reached, although it does not seem to have taken us a long time to reach it. In fact, we have reached it rather quickly.’ She paused. ‘But maybe we can come back to this subject on another day, and we can get another speaker.’ This last remark was accompanied by a sideways glance at Mma Ramotswe, who merely smiled.

  On Monday, in the office of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Mma Makutsi asked Mma Ramotswe how Friday’s meeting had gone.

  ‘Did you sort out the problem with men?’ she enquired.

  ‘Of men,’ corrected Mma Ramotswe. ‘No, we did not sort that out. In fact, we decided that …’ she trailed off.

  ‘Yes?’ asked Mma Makutsi.

  ‘You know, Mma Makutsi, not all men are a problem,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

  Mma Makutsi stared at her employer. ‘Have you been weak, Mma? Were all those ladies weak?’

  Mma Ramotswe did not say anything at first. She looked out of the window at the thorn tree behind the office. There were two grey doves on a branch of the tree, two faithful grey doves. They sat beside each other on their branch, dappled by the sun through the delicate leaves of the tree.

  ‘It is time for more bush tea, I think,’ said Mma Ramotswe.

  The Shape of Ladies

  Mma Ramotswe was sitting in her office, drinking a cup of redbush tea. It was her fourth cup of bush tea that day, but that did not matter. She could drink six or even seven cups if she wished, as bush tea contained no caffeine and was said to be rather good for you. So she was never affected by those worries which coffee drinkers had about absorbing too much caffeine, or tea drinkers had about their teeth turning brown from all the tannin in their favourite brew. Mma Makutsi, her assistant, had recently started to drink ordinary tea again, and had to watch how many cups she consumed during the day or she would have trouble in sleeping at night. And Mma Makutsi was also worried that too much tea might not help her complexion, which was a difficult one.

  ‘I have heard that drinks like coffee and tea may not be good for the skin,’ she had remarked to Mma Ramotswe. ‘Perhaps I should stop drinking them.’

  ‘I have heard that too, Mma,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘But you cannot stop everything that you like just for the sake of
looking good. That is the trouble with these fashionable ladies who starve themselves in order to stay thin. What’s the point of that? Why be hungry and unhappy when you could just as easily be full of good food and happy?’

  ‘You are right, Mma,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘I have heard such ladies described as fashion victims. That is very sad, isn’t it?’

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. ‘It is much better to be traditionally built. Traditionally built people are always happier. Have you noticed that, Mma Makutsi? Have you seen how miserable those thin people look most of the time and how contented traditionally built people look?’

  Mma Makutsi gazed out of the window. Outside the office, the acacia trees looked drained of life and energy. Under the relentless hammer of the midday sun, nature seemed to be browbeaten into submission, afraid to move, torpid. On a branch of one of the trees a grey lourie, known as the go-away bird thanks to its cry, perched half-concealed by the foliage. Mma Makutsi watched the bird, and reflected: one never saw traditionally built birds; such birds, if they existed, would be unable to get off the ground to escape their predators. A traditionally built bird would not last long.

  She turned to Mma Ramotswe. ‘Of course, what you say is right, Mma,’ she began. ‘But do you not think that you might be saying that because you cannot lose weight? Would you say the same thing if you were not traditionally built yourself?’

  There was a silence in the room – a silence which was suddenly broken by the plaintive cry outside of the go-away bird. It was as if the bird had heard this remark and wished to refute it.

  Mma Ramotswe stared at Mma Makutsi, who dropped her gaze. The younger woman had wanted to say something along these lines for some time now, whenever Mma Ramotswe started to go on about the advantages of being traditionally built, but perhaps she should not have voiced it. Mma Ramotswe was such a kind woman who was always courteous to others, and Mma Makutsi now remembered the numerous acts of kindness which she herself had been shown by her employer. The first of these had been Mma Ramotswe’s taking her on as a secretary when there was not really enough work to justify such a post – even in the case of somebody who had got ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mma Ramotswe,’ she began, stumbling over the words in her embarrassment. ‘I did not … I did not think before I started—’

  Mma Ramotswe cut her short. ‘Don’t worry, Mma. What you say is true enough, I think. Maybe I do go on a bit about the advantages of being traditionally built. But I don’t think that it’s because I couldn’t lose weight. Of course I could lose weight.’

  Mma Makutsi did not intend to show surprise but her eyes widened nonetheless. ‘Could you, Mma?’ she asked. ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Of course I could,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘If I wanted to. But I’m not sure if I want to, you see. I am not going to be intimidated into going on one of these diets. Why should I? I am happy as I am. You know that.’

  Mma Makutsi smiled. ‘Oh, I know that, Mma,’ she said. ‘But, you know, it’s not only a question of happiness. It’s also a question of health.’

  Mma Ramotswe took a sip of her bush tea. ‘I am very healthy,’ she said firmly. ‘And this bush tea keeps me that way.’

  ‘So we’ll never know whether you have the willpower or not,’ muttered Mma Makutsi, almost under her breath.

  Mma Makutsi had not made this remark in order to provoke a reaction; in fact, she had more or less made it to herself. But it did not go unnoticed by Mma Ramotswe, who put her teacup down on the desk with a sudden thud.

  ‘If you need me to show you that, Mma,’ she said, ‘then I shall be very happy to go on a diet and settle the matter.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t—’ began Mma Makutsi. But her protest was waved away by Mma Ramotswe.

  ‘I have made up my mind, Mma Makutsi,’ she said. ‘So I suggest that we get on with some work. The matter is now closed.’

  Mma Ramotswe drove home in her tiny white van, back down Tlokweng Road and into the area of town known as the Village. She drove past Mrs Moffat’s house, with its great jacaranda tree that shaded the house and half the garden. She slowed down, seeing her friend in her garden watering her vegetables, and waved. Mrs Moffat waved back, and Mma Ramotswe noticed for the first time that her friend was not at all traditionally built. What was her secret? she wondered. She seemed to enjoy cake well enough; when they met for tea there was always some cake on the table. But how many pieces did she eat? Did she ever take a second piece, or did she stop at one? She tried to remember the last time she had had tea with Mrs Moffat. They had sat out on the veranda and talked, and there had been four pieces of cake on a plate in front of them. She remembered that cake, which had been covered with a delicious lemon icing, and she could see Mrs Moffat offering her a second piece, and she remembered taking it. Then she recalled licking the icing off the tips of her fingers and being offered yet another piece. And she had accepted. Yes, she had; the memory was coming back clearly now. So that answered that: she had eaten three pieces of cake to Mrs Moffat’s single piece; Mrs Moffat was not traditionally built because she usually only ate one piece of cake. Traditionally built people ate at least three pieces.

  When Mma Ramotswe arrived home, she went straight into the kitchen. It was half past five, and this was the time when she liked to sit on her veranda, a cup of tea in hand, and observe the ending of the day. On the road outside her house, which was normally quiet, there would be a few passing cars as people made their way back home. She recognised many of these cars: the large red car that belonged to the man who worked for the diamond company; the sleek black car of the woman who had a beauty salon in one of the hotels; the car that belonged to her neighbour, who had those unpleasant yellow dogs that barked at night. That last car was not a car she would like to travel in, with its windows covered in marks where the dogs had pressed their moist noses against the glass.

  She watched the cars, and the passersby, people walking home on foot. There was a man whistling a tune she half-recognised; a young boy shuffling along, scuffing his shoes in the dirt at the side of the road, who glanced up and saw her through the hedge and looked away quickly, as if expecting some reproach. She smiled; she would not reprimand a young boy in public these days, at least not in Gaborone, though adults would do so quite readily in the villages. It takes a whole village to raise a child, people said, and Mma Ramotswe agreed. But things had changed in town, and people were less ready to remind children of what they should do and what they should not do. That was bad. How could children grow up knowing what to do if adults were not there to tell them? Mma Ramotswe shook her head.

  Her tea finished, she stood and made her way back into the kitchen. There was a meal to be prepared now, and she opened the fridge door to take out the small parcel of beef that she had bought the previous day from the supermarket at the beginning of the Tlokweng Road. It was good Botswana beef, and the thought of it made her mouth water. This was fine, grass-fed beef, from the land that she knew so well, from cattle which might have belonged to people she knew, or their cousins, or somebody with whom she could easily establish some form of contact. For that was what Botswana was like. Everybody knew somebody who knew somebody else; nobody could be a stranger, no matter how hard he tried.

  She took the beef out of the packet and put it on a chopping board. The meat was tender and light red; it would make a very fine stew once she had added onions to it, and some carrots too. And then there would be some mashed potatoes, which the children, the two adopted orphans, loved to eat. Puso, the boy, especially liked potatoes prepared in that way. He would make a little hill of the potatoes and create a dam at the top, a dam filled with rich, heavy gravy. Mma Ramotswe smiled at the thought. Boys were like that – they never stopped playing. Just like men.

  It was hungry work making the stew, and the smell of the meat browning in her large blackened saucepan made her stomach seem to knock at her ribs. Yes, she would enjoy the
stew too, and would perhaps have two helpings – there was certainly enough for that. But then she paused. Her diet had begun, and she had told herself she would have only a very small portion of stew and no potatoes at all. It was a terrible thought. Perhaps the diet should begin tomorrow, after breakfast. Perhaps it should begin at the end of the week, once she had given herself time to get used to the idea of being hungry. Perhaps …

  At the table, seated with Mr J. L. B. Matekoni and the children, Mma Ramotswe took the lid off the pot in which the stew had been brought from the kitchen. Immediately a rich, tempting smell filled the air, making Mr J. L. B. Matekoni lean forward in anticipation.

  ‘This smells very good,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘I have been working very hard all day and I am looking forward to this good meal you have made, Mma Ramotswe.’

  Mma Ramotswe frowned at him. ‘I have been working hard all day too,’ she snapped. ‘There is not just one person in this house who works hard.’

  Mr J. L. B. Matekoni looked up in surprise. It was unlike Mma Ramotswe to snap at him, and yet her response to his innocent comment had been distinctly short. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said mildly. ‘I know that you work hard, Mma Ramotswe. Everybody knows that.’

  Mma Ramotswe said nothing, but concentrated on ladling out helpings of the stew and the vegetables that went with it. She gave Mr J. L. B. Matekoni a particularly large portion, and she also gave generous helpings to Puso and his sister, Motholeli. But when it came to her own turn, she served herself only a very small amount, barely enough to cover one corner of the plate.

  ‘Are you not hungry tonight?’ asked Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. ‘This stew is very good, Mma Ramotswe. You should have some more.’

  ‘No, thank you, Rra,’ said Mma Ramotswe. She tried to make her voice sound normal, but it came out sounding irritated, as if she were cross with Mr J. L. B. Matekoni for even raising the issue. He said nothing further. Women were sometimes inexplicably moody, he had observed, and this was an example of that. And the best thing to do in such circumstances was to be completely quiet. Resistance was useless; all men knew that.