Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (2 page)

Mma Ramotswe was silent as she thought about this. She had long understood that one of the features of Mma Makutsi's speeches was that there was often a grain of truth in them, and sometimes even more than that.

“And here's another thing, Mma Ramotswe,” Mma Makutsi
continued. “Have you heard of evolution? Well, what will happen if we all carry on being lazy like this and drive everywhere? I can tell you, Mma. We shall start to grow wheels. That is what evolution is all about.”

Mma Ramotswe laughed. “Surely not, Mma!”

But Mma Makutsi was serious. “Oh yes, Mma Ramotswe. Our fingers have evolved so that we can do things like typing. That is well known. Why should our legs not evolve in the same way? They will become circular, I think, and they will turn round and round. That is what will happen, Mma, if we are not careful.”

Mma Ramotswe could not keep herself from smiling. “I do not think that will happen, Mma.”

Mma Makutsi pursed her lips. “We shall see, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe almost said:
But we shall not, Mma Makutsi, because evolution takes a long time, and you and I shall not be around to see the results.
But she did not, because Mma Makutsi's remarks had struck a chord within her and she wanted to think about them a bit more. When had she herself last walked any distance at all? It was sobering to realise that she could not remember. She usually went for a walk around her garden shortly after dawn—and sometimes in the evenings as well—but that was not very far, and she often spent more time looking at plants, or standing and thinking, than walking. And for the rest, she used her tiny white van, driving in it each morning to the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and then driving home again at the end of the day. And if she went to the shops at River Walk, to the supermarket where there had been that dramatic chase with shopping carts, she drove there too, parking as close to the entrance as she could, so that she did not have a long walk across the car park. No, she was as good an example as anybody of what Mma Makutsi had been talking about. And so was Mma Potokwane, the
matron of the orphan farm, who drove everywhere in that old van that they used to transport the children; and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, too, who was even more implicated in this epidemic of laziness, given that he fixed cars and vans and thereby enabled people to avoid walking.

No, Mma Makutsi was right, or, even if she was not entirely right, was a bit right. Cars had changed Botswana; cars had changed everywhere, and Mma Ramotswe was not at all sure that this change was entirely for the better.

I shall start walking a bit more, she resolved. It is not enough just to identify a problem; there were plenty of people who were very skilled at pointing out what was wrong with the world, but they were not always so adept at working out how these things could be righted. Mma Ramotswe did not wish to be one of these armchair critics; she would do something. She would start walking to work on … she almost decided on three days of each week, but then thought that two days would be quite enough. And she would start tomorrow.

On the way home that evening, the idea of walking came back to Mma Ramotswe. The idea returned, though, not because she remembered what Mma Makutsi had said about laziness, but because the tiny white van, which in the past few months had intermittently been making a strange noise, was now making that noise again, but louder than before. It happened as she made her way into Zebra Drive; turning a corner always put a strain on the tiny white van, which was something to do with the suspension and what Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni referred to politely as the “distribution of load.” Mma Ramotswe had pondered this expression and then asked, perhaps rather bluntly, “And the load, I take it, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, is me?”

He had looked away to cover his embarrassment. “You could say that, Mma Ramotswe. But then all of us are loads when it
comes to vehicles. Even one of these very thin model ladies will be a load …” He trailed off. He was not making it any better, he thought, and Mma Ramotswe was looking at him in an expectant way.

When it became apparent that he had nothing further to add, Mma Ramotswe had continued, “Yes, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, there are such ladies. And unfortunately they are becoming more common. There are now many of them.” She paused. “But perhaps they will begin to disappear. They will get thinner and thinner, and more and more fashionable, and then … pouf … they will be blown away by the wind.”

This remark reduced the tension that had built, and they both laughed. “That will teach them,” he said. “They will be blown away while the other ladies will still be here because the wind will not be strong enough to lift …” He stopped once more; Mma Ramotswe was again looking at him expectantly.

The distribution of load, that evidently led to difficulties, but now, as the van started to make an alarming sound again, she realised that this had nothing to do with suspension and traditionally built drivers. This had to do with some fundamental sickness deep in the engine itself; the tiny white van was sick at heart.

She lifted her foot off the accelerator to see if that would help, but all that it did was to reduce the volume of the knocking sound. And when she put her foot down on the pedal again, the noise resumed. Only at a very slow speed, barely above walking pace, did the sound disappear altogether. It was as if the van was saying to her:
I am old now; I can still move, but I must move at the pace of a very old van
.

She continued her progress down Zebra Drive, steering the van carefully through her gateway with all the care of a nurse wheeling a very sick patient down the corridor of a hospital. Then
she parked the van under its habitual tree at the side of the house and climbed out of the driving seat. As she went inside, she debated with herself what to do. She was married to a mechanic, a situation in which any woman would revel, especially when her car broke down. Mechanics made good husbands, as did carpenters and plumbers—that was well known—and any woman proposed to by such a man would do well to accept. But for every advantage that attended any particular man, it always seemed as if there was a compensating disadvantage lurking somewhere. The mechanic as husband could be counted on to get a car going again, but he could just as surely be counted upon to be eager to change the car. Mechanics were very rarely satisfied with what they had, in mechanical terms, that is, and often wanted their customers—or indeed their wives—to change one car for another. If Mma Ramotswe told Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni that the tiny white van was making a strange noise, she knew exactly what he would say, as he had said it all before.

“It's time to replace the van, Mma Ramotswe,” he had said, only a few months earlier. And then he had added, “No vehicle lasts forever, you know.”

“I know that, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni,” she said. “But surely it's wrong to replace a vehicle that still has a lot of life left in it. That's not very responsible, I think.”

“Your van is over twenty,” he said. “Twenty-two years old, I believe. That is about half the age of Botswana itself.”

It had not been a wise comparison, and Mma Ramotswe seized on it. “So you would replace Botswana?” she said. “When a country gets old, you say,
That's enough, let's get a new country
. I'm surprised at you, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.”

This unsatisfactory conversation had ended there, but Mma Ramotswe knew that if she reported the van to him it would be tantamount to signing its death warrant. She thought about that
this evening, as she prepared the potatoes for the family dinner. The house was quiet: Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was not going to be in until later, as he had delivered one car to Lobatse and was coming back in another. The two foster children, Puso and Motholeli, were in their rooms, tackling their homework, or so Mma Ramotswe thought, until she heard the sound of laughter drifting down the corridor. She imagined that they were sharing a joke or the memory of something amusing that had happened at school that day, a remark made by a friend, a humiliation suffered by an unpopular teacher.

The laughter suddenly broke out again, and this time it was followed by giggles. Homework had to be finished by dinner time; that was the rule, and too much laughing at jokes would not help that. Putting down her potato peeler, Mma Ramotswe went to investigate.

“Motholeli?” she asked outside the girl's closed door.

The giggling that had been going on inside the room stopped abruptly. Tapping lightly—Mma Ramotswe always respected the children's privacy—she pushed the door open.

Motholeli was in her wheelchair near her small work-table, facing another girl of similar age, who was sitting in the chair beside the bed. The two had been giggling uncontrollably, as their eyes, Mma Ramotswe noticed, had tears of laughter in the corners.

“Your homework must be very funny today,” Mma Ramotswe said.

Motholeli glanced conspiratorially at her friend, and then looked back at Mma Ramotswe. “This is my friend,” she said. “She is called Alice.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at the other girl, who rose to her feet politely and lowered her head. The greetings exchanged, the visitor sat down.

“Have you done your homework, Motholeli?” Mma Ramotswe asked.

The girl replied that it was completely finished; it had been easy she said; so simple that even Puso could have done it, and he was several years younger.

“The reason why our homework is so simple today,” Alice explained, “is that the teacher who gave it to us is not very intelligent. She can only mark simple homework.”

This observation set the two girls giggling again, and Mma Ramotswe had to bite her lip to prevent herself from giggling too. But she could not join in the girls' mirth at the expense of a teacher. Teachers had to be respected—as they always had been in Botswana—and if children thought them stupid, then that would hardly encourage respect.

“I do not think that this teacher can be like that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Teachers have to pass examinations. They are very well-educated.”

“Not this one,” said Motholeli, setting the two children off in paroxysms of laughter.

Mma Ramotswe gave up. There was no point in trying to stop teenage girls from giggling; that was the way they were. One might as well try to stop men liking football. The analogy made her stop and think. Football. Tomorrow morning, if she remembered correctly, Mr. Leungo Molofololo had arranged to come to see her at ten o'clock. Mma Ramotswe was used to receiving well-known people, but Mr. Molofololo, by any standards, would be an important client. Not only did he have a large house up at Phulukane—a house which must have cost many millions of pula to build—but he had the ear of virtually every influential person in the country. Mr. Molofololo controlled the country's best football team, and that, in the world of men, counted for more than anything else.

“He is just a man,” Mma Makutsi had said, after Mr. Molofololo's secretary had called to make the appointment. “The fact that he has a football team is neither here nor there, Mma. He is the same as any man.”

But Mma Ramotswe thought differently. Mr. Molofololo was not just any man; he was Mr. Football.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, over breakfast, Mma Ramotswe announced to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni that she would be walking to work that day. She had taken the decision an hour or so earlier, in the middle of her habitual stroll around her garden, shortly after inspecting the pawpaw trees that marked the boundary between her plot and the small piece of wasteland that ran behind it. She had planted the trees herself when first she had come to Zebra Drive and the garden had been nothing, just hard earth, scrub, and sour weeds. Now the trees were laden with fruit, heavy yellow orbs that she would shortly pick and enjoy. She liked pawpaw, but neither Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nor the children did, and so these would be for her alone, a private treat, served with orange juice and topped, perhaps, with a small sprinkling of sugar.

Beside the pawpaw trees was an acacia tree in which birds liked to pause on their journeys and in which Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had once seen a long green snake, curled around a branch, its tail hanging down like an elongated twig to be brushed against by some unwary person passing below. The sighting of snakes was an everyday occurrence in Botswana, but the unfortunate creatures were never left alone. Mma Ramotswe did not like to kill them
and had thoroughly agreed with a recent public plea from the Wildlife Department that people should refrain from doing anything about snakes unless they actually came into the house. They have their place, said the official, and if there were no snakes, then there would be many more rats, and all the rats would make quick work of the patiently gathered harvest.

That message, though, went against most people's deepest instincts. Mma Makutsi, for example, had no time for snakes, and would not hesitate to dispose of one should she have the chance.

“It's all very well for the Government, Mma Ramotswe,” she said. “Tell me, are there any snakes coming into government offices? These government people do not have to live with snakes as people do in the villages or at the cattle posts. You ask those people out there what to do about snakes and you will get a very different answer.”