MMA PRECIOUS Ramotswe has been delighting millions of readers since 1998, when she made her first appearance in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Since then, Botswana's only female private detective has featured in ten more books.
And in 2008 and 2009, the BBC filmed several of Mma Ramotswe's stories on location in Botswana. Mma Ramotswe runs her detective agency with her assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi. She is married to a garage owner, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, and is fostering two children, Motheleli and her younger brother Puso. . . Very strange, muttered Mma Makutsi. Precious Ramotswe, founder and owner of The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Botswana's only detective agency for the problems of ladies - and others - looked up from her desk.
'I beg your pardon, Mma?' Her assistant sometimes made odd comments, as if she was talking to herself, which often proved to be the case.
'Strange,' Mma Makutsi repeated. 'Yes, it's very strange.'
African adventure: TV cast Anika Noni Rose as Mma Grace Makutsi, Jill Scott as Mma Ramotswe and Lucian Msamati as her husband
Mma Ramotswe smiled. 'I'm sure it is, Mma. There are many strange things going on. Sometimes I think that we can hardly imagine how strange some of them are.'
She paused. Now that she came to think of it, she found it difficult to call to mind any concrete instances of strange things happening. But that was not this issue, and so she continued: 'But what strange things in particular were you thinking of?'
Mma Makutsi, who had been arranging papers on her desk, looked up from her task. Across the room, at the larger of the two desks, sat her employer, Mma Ramotswe, the larger of the two ladies.
Or not so much large, as traditionally-built, which is the way that quite rightly she described herself.
'I was thinking about your husband,' Mma Makutsi answered. 'I was thinking about something rather strange that he said to me.'
Mma Ramotswe raised an eyebrow. 'Mr J.L.B. Matekoni has said something strange?'
Mma Makutsi nodded. 'Yes, Mma. He said something very strange to me yesterday, I think it was. Or maybe the day before. When he said it does not matter too much. What is important is that he said it.'
Mma Ramotswe shifted uncomfortably in her chair. This was worrying. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was the best of husbands - a model husband, one might go so far as to say - but you had to watch him nonetheless.
It was not that he was untrustworthy; nor had he ever shown the slightest sign of going off with another woman - a weakness of quite a number of husbands. No, it was nothing like that.
You had to watch him, because some years previously he had suffered from a depressive illness and the doctors had warned that there was always a chance that it might recur.
They had dealt with it quickly, and successfully, and they said that they could do that again if the need arose, but one had to keep an eye on him - just in case.
'What exactly did Mr J.L.B. Matekoni say?' asked Mma Ramotswe. Mma Makutsi thought for a moment. 'It was during the lunch hour,' she said.
'You had gone to the shops, Mma. Or maybe to the Post Office. Yes, I think it was the Post Office. Did you go to the Post Office the day before yesterday?'
Mma Ramotswe frowned. 'I don't know, Mma. I'm always going to the Post Office. I can't be sure that I went that day. Or when.' She sighed. 'I really don't think it's important, Mma Makutsi. The important thing is that . . . '
She did not have the time to finish. 'But it is important, Mma,' said Mma Makutsi. 'What does Clovis Andersen himself say? He says that you must always pay attention to when something happens. He says that, Mma, in The Principle Of Private Detection.'
Mma Ramotswe found herself feeling increasingly impatient. She knew what Clovis Andersen said, as it was her book, first and foremost, and she was more familiar with it than was Mma Makutsi.
Who was Mma Makutsi to quote Clovis Andersen to her, when she was only an assistant detective?
'Anyway,' continued Mma Makutsi. 'It was that day when you were possibly, but not definitely, in the Post Office. I was here, standing outside, under the tree, drinking a glass of water because it was very hot, Mma. It was a very hot day.'
Mma Ramotswe was silent. It was best, she thought, not to interrupt Mma Makutsi when she was in the middle of one of her stories.
'I was standing under that tree out there,' Mma Makutsi went on. 'And Mr J.L.B. Matekoni came out of the garage and said this very strange thing to me. It was very strange, Mma, because I was not expecting it. I really wasn't.'
Mma Ramotswe looked out of the window. From where she was sitting she could see the tree that Mma Makutsi had referred to - or part of it. It was an acacia tree, typical of the trees that grew in that part of Botswana and that dotted the bush like tiny, greygreen umbrellas.
This tree that grew outside the shared premises of the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors was home to a pair of doves, whose cooing they heard in the office but rarely paid much attention to. One of the doves was there now, seated on a high branch, waiting for its spouse.
She looked at Mma Makutsi. 'And?' she asked.
'And then he said this thing to me.' Mma Ramotswe coaxed her gently. 'What thing, Mma? What did Mr J.L.B. Matekoni say to you?'
MMA MAKUTSI took off her glasses and began to polish them. 'He said: "Can you tell me, Mma - what does Mma Ramotswe really want?" And so I said to him: "What is this, Rra? What do you mean? And then the telephone rang in the garage and he went in to answer it. So I never heard his answer." '
For a few moments, Mma Ramotswe was silent. Then she said: 'That is very strange, Mma. What do you think he meant?'
Mma Makutsi shrugged. Giving her glasses a final wipe, she replaced them and looked across the room at Mma Ramotswe.
'It is difficult to tell,' she said.
'Men are quite different from women, you know, Mma. We cannot always understand what they are trying to say.'
Mma Ramotswe found herself agreeing with this. Men were different - that was very well known. They thought in different ways; there was so much that they simply did not see; yes, they were very different.
On many occasions, men did not seem to know what they wanted; and yet here was Mr J.L.B. Matekoni apparently trying to find out what she wanted. It was all very odd. Or was it? Suddenly, it came to her, and it was so obvious that it made her laugh out loud. Of course!
'Tell me, Mma Makutsi,' Mma Ramotswe began. 'Tell me: what month is this?'
Mma Makutsi was surprised by the question. 'It is December, Mma.' She looked at her employer with amusement. 'Did you not know that?'
'Of course I knew it,' said Mma Ramotswe, smiling broadly. 'I wanted to find out whether you knew it.'
Mma Makutsi bristled. 'I am well aware of what month it is, Mma.'
Mma Ramotswe nodded. 'I'm sure you are. But what happens in December?' 'It gets very hot,' answered Mma Makutsi.
'And there is rain, if we are lucky.' She looked out of the window, at the sky beyond the foliage of the trees. 'Not today, though. There is nothing in the sky today - just air.'
Mma Ramotswe nodded encouragingly. 'And? What else in December?'
'Oh. Yes, I see. There is Christmas.' 'Precisely,' said Mma Ramotswe. 'There is Christmas.'
That evening, Mma Ramotswe got back to the house a good halfhour before Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who was busy with a painstaking repair of a troublesome gearbox. She had spoken to him as she left the garage.
'They are making these things more and more complicated,' he complained from underneath the car. 'They think: how can we make this more difficult for those stupid mechanics? So they put in more and more pieces, like the people who make those puzzles, with all those little wooden pieces .'
'Jigsaw puzzles,' prompted Mma Ramotswe from the side of the car.
'Yes,' came Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's muffled reply. 'It is very strange.' Very strange - the exact words that Mma Makutsi had used. Mma Ramotswe hesitated.
Should she say something? Should she tell him what she really wanted for her Christmas present?
Or should she leave it? It could spoil things for him if she told him what to buy, as the present would be no surprise on Christmas Day.
And one also had to bear in mind, she told herself, that men could be sensitive about these things. They did not like women to assume that they were not very good at buying presents, even if that was true in the case of most of them.
Poor men! They tried so hard, and it was not really their fault that their heads were full of thoughts of cars and football and such subjects.
She decided to leave the matter where it was. If he wanted to know what she would like for Christmas, then he had only to ask. It was entirely up to him.
The two foster children had already returned from school when she got back to the house on Zebra Drive. Motheleli, the older of the two, always accompanied her younger brother, Puso, on the short walk back from the school.
He pushed her wheelchair for part of the way - the whole way if she was tired - and she made sure that he did not wander off or cross the road without looking in both directions in turn.
And then, when they reached the house, she poured him a glass of the cold lemon squash that Mma Ramotswe made each week and left chilling in the fridge, and then prepared a thickly- cut peanut butter sandwich for him to eat as he did his homework.
The homework was on the point of being finished by the time Mma Ramotswe came into the kitchen. She looked at it, corrected one or two of the more obvious mistakes, and told Puso that he could go out and play.
Motheleli, who had put on the kettle, stayed to talk to her. This was an important time of day for both of them, when the events of the school day could be shared, and Mma Ramotswe could tell her of the day's activities at the No1 Ladies' Detective Agency - suitably modified for younger ears, of course.
That meant that nothing was said about any of the investigations of errant husbands, or unfaithful wives for that matter. Mma Ramotswe thought that children should be spared such things, especially if, as was the case with Motheleli and her brother, they had seen so much tragedy in their young lives before they were given a home by Mma Ramostwe and Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.
'Mma Makutsi told me something today,' she remarked as she poured the boiling water into her pot of redbush tea. 'She said that Daddy asked her what I really wanted. I think he was wondering about Christmas.'
'I know,' said Motheleli. 'You know what? That he is wondering about Christmas presents?'
Motheleli nodded. 'Yes,' she said. 'The other day, when I was with my friend at the shops, I saw him coming out of that ladies' shop - you know the one. The one with those dresses for . . . ' She hesitated. 'For traditionally-built ladies.'
Mma Ramotswe knew the shop. It was a godsend for the traditionallybuilt ladies of Gaborone, who might otherwise have to squeeze themselves into dresses that were more suitable for those skinny, malnourished ladies who seemed to get all the attention these days.
Did this mean that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was planning to buy her a dress for Christmas? That would be a very strange thing for a man to do.
It was true, of course, that there were new men - men who did housework and cooked and helped with the 101 tasks that the women of Botswana, and everywhere else, had shouldered for so long.
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was a kind man, and a good man too, but she did not think that he was one of these new men; not necessarily because he would refuse to become a new man if invited, but more because he had probably never heard of the idea.
There were, she thought, very few new mechanics.
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