Alexander Mccall Smith - Ladies' Detective Agency 05 Read Online Free PDF Page A

to do a sponsored parachute jump, Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni,” she said.

    CHAPTER THREE

    MMA RAMOTSWE VISITS HER COUSIN IN MOCHUDI, AND
THINKS
    M MA RAMOTSWE did not see Mr J.L.B. Matekoni that
Saturday, as she had driven up to Mochudi in her tiny white van. She planned to
stay there until Sunday, leaving the children to be looked after by Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni. These were the foster children from the orphan farm, whom Mr J.L.B.
Matekoni had agreed to take into his home, without consulting Mma Ramotswe. But
she had been unable to hold this against him, even if many women would have
felt that they should have been consulted about the introduction of children
into their lives; it was typical of his generosity that he should do something
like this. After a few days, the children had come to stay with her, which was
better than their living in his house, with its engine parts that littered the
floor and with its empty store cupboards (Mr J.L.B. Matekoni did not bother to
buy much food). And so they had moved to the house in Zebra Drive, the girl and
her brother; the girl in a wheelchair, for illness had left her unable to walk,
and the brother, much younger than she, and still needing special attention
after all that had happened to him.
    Mma Ramotswe had no particular
reason to go up to Mochudi, but it was the village in which she had grown up
and one never really needed an excuse to visit the place in which one had spent
one’s childhood. That was the marvellous thing about going back to
one’s roots; there was no need for explanation. In Mochudi everybody knew
who she was: the daughter of Obed Ramotswe, who had gone off to Gaborone, where
she had made a bad marriage to a trumpet player she had met on a bus. That was
all common knowledge, part of the web of memories which made up the village
life of Botswana. In that world, nobody needed to be a stranger; everybody
could be linked in some way with others, even a visitor; for visitors came for
a reason, did they not? They would be associated, then, with the people whom
they were visiting. There was a place for everybody.
    Mma Ramotswe had
been thinking a great deal recently about how people might be fitted in. The
world was a large place, and one might have thought that there was enough room
for everybody. But it seemed that this was not so. There were many people who
were unhappy, and wanted to move. Often they wished to come to the more
fortunate countries—such as Botswana—in order to make more of their
lives. That was understandable, and yet there were those who did not want them.
This is our place, they said; you are not welcome.
    It was so easy to
think like that. People wanted to protect themselves from those they did not
know. Others were different; they talked different languages and wore different
clothes. Many people did not want them living close to them, just because of
these differences. And yet, they were people, were they not? They thought the
same way, and had the same hopes as anybody else did. They were our brothers
and sisters, whichever way you looked at it, and you could not turn a brother
or sister away.
    Mochudi was busy. There was to be a wedding at the
Dutch Reformed Church that afternoon, and the relatives of the bride were
arriving from Serowe and Mahalapye. There was also something happening at one
of the schools—a sports day, it seemed—and as she passed the field
(or patch of dust, she noted ruefully) a teacher in a green floppy hat was
shouting at a group of children in running shorts. Ahead of her on the road a
couple of donkeys ambled aimlessly, flicking at the flies with their moth-eaten
tails. It was, in short, a typical Mochudi Saturday.
    Mma Ramotswe went
to her cousin’s house and sat on a stool in the lelapa, the small,
carefully swept yard which forms the immediate curtilage of the traditional
Botswana house. Mma Ramotswe was always pleased to see her cousin, as these
visits gave her the opportunity to catch up on village news. This