Tea Time for the Traditionally Built Read Online Free PDF Page B

world is not just there for you. It is there for minorities too
. No, you are right, Mma, we must remember the rights of women.”
    “Who are not in a minority,” said Mma Makutsi from behind her desk. “In fact, there are more women than there are men because men die earlier than women. They die earlier because they drink too much and sit about. So we are the majority, Rra.”
    Mr. Molofololo cast his eyes up towards the ceiling. “Not in the world of football, Mma,” he said. “And that is what I have come to see
Mma Ramotswe
about.”
    Mma Ramotswe smiled at him apologetically. “Mma Makutsi is an assistant detective, Rra. She is very good at investigating a wide range of matters. And she is the fiancée of Phuti Radiphuti. You will probably know the father of that man …”
    Her remarks had the desired effect. Mr. Molofololo half turned in his seat and gave Mma Makutsi a nod. “I'm very happy to meet you, Mma. I did not know that it was you. Mr. Radiphuti—the older one—is a friend of many years.”
    “That is very good,” said Mma Ramotswe. And it was; Mma Ramotswe liked people to know one another, and if the bondbetween them went back over more than one generation, then all the better. That was how it had always been in Botswana, where the links between people, those profound connections of blood and lineage, spread criss-cross over the human landscape, binding one to another in reliance, trust, and sheer familiarity. At one time there had been no strangers in Botswana; everybody fitted in somehow, even if tenuously and on the margins. Now there were strangers, and the bonds had been weakened by drift to the towns and by other things too: by the conduct that had sired the wave of children who had no idea who their father, or their father's people, might be; by the cruel ravages of the disease that made orphans in a country where the very concept of an orphan had been barely known, as there had always been aunts and grandmothers aplenty to fill the breach. Yes, all that had changed, but in spite of it, the old bonds survived, as she saw now in Mr. Molofololo's recognition of the fact that Mma Makutsi was not just a secretary given to irritating interjections, but a person with a place.
    “Football,” said Mr. Molofololo. “Or you can call it soccer, if you like. The beautiful game. You know that it is called that, Mma? That is what they call football.”
    Mma Ramotswe did not know that. She had never been to a football match, although she had seen boys, including Puso, playing it and had watched for a few minutes here and there. Was it beautiful? She supposed that it was—in a manner of speaking. They were always very skilful, those soccer players, as the nicknames they often bore revealed. She had seen these mentioned recently in the newspaper, when a football player called Fast-Dancer Galeboe had been pictured at a function talking to another player called High-Jump Boseja. Those nicknames at least gave some indication of the talents of the player in question; others seemed less obvious. She had read about Joel “Twelve Volts” Koko of the Township Rollers, and Sekhana “Fried Chicken”Molwantwa of the Extension Gunners. She could not imagine why Mr. Koko should be called Twelve Volts, although she could presume that Mr. Molwantwa had a taste for fried chicken. Perhaps the whole thing was to do with the way men got on with one another; they often laughed and slapped each other on the back or pretended to kick one another. Perhaps it was to do with all that.
    “I am afraid that I do not know much about football, Rra,” Mma Ramotswe said. “But I can understand why it should be called the beautiful game—with all that running around and dodging in and out. That might be called beautiful, I suppose.”
    “I have never understood the attraction myself,” chipped in Mma Makutsi. “Why make such a fuss about kicking a ball up and down a field?”
    Mr. Molofololo appeared to take this in good