It would be tempting, she thought, to write to Aunty Emang when next she had a particularly intractable problem to deal with. She would write and ask her what she would do in the circumstances.Here, Aunty Emang, just you solve this one! Yes, it would be interesting to do that, she thought, but completely unprofessional. If you were a private detective, as Mma Ramotswe was, you could not reveal your client’s problem to the world; indeed, Clovis Andersen had something to say on this subject. “Keep your mouth shut,” he had written in The Principles of Private Detection . “Keep your mouth shut at all times, but at the same time encourage others to do precisely the opposite.”
Mma Ramotswe had remembered this advice, and had to agree that even if it sounded like hypocrisy (if it was indeed hypocrisy to do one thing and encourage others to do the opposite), it was at the heart of good detection to get other people to talk. People loved to talk, especially in Botswana, and if you only gave them the chance they would tell you everything that you needed to know. Mma Ramotswe had found this to be true in so many of her cases. If you want the answer to something, then ask somebody. It always worked.
She put the paper aside and marshalled her thoughts. It was all very well sitting there on her verandah thinking about the problems of others, but it was getting late in the afternoon and there were things to do. In the kitchen at the back of the house there was a packet of green beans that needed to be washed and chopped. There was a pumpkin that was not going to cook itself. There were onions to be put in a pan of boiling water and cooked until soft. That was part of being a woman, she thought; one never reached the end. Even if one could sit down and drink a cup of bush tea, or even two cups, one always knew that at the end of the tea somebody was waiting for something. Children or men were waiting to be fed; a dirty floor cried out to be washed; a crumpled skirt called for the iron. And so it would continue. Tea was just a temporary solution to the cares of the world, although it certainly helped. Perhaps she should write and tell Aunty Emang that. Most problems could be diminished by the drinking of tea and the thinking through of things that could be done while tea was being drunk. And even if that did not solve problems, at least it could put them off for a little while, which we sometimes needed to do, we really did.
CHAPTER TWO
CORRECT AND INCORRECT WAYS OF DEALING WITH A SNAKE
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY MORNING, the performance of the Zebras in the game against Zambia on Saturday afternoon was the first topic of discussion, at least among the men.
“I knew that we would win,” said Charlie, the elder apprentice. “I knew it all the time. And we did. We won.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni smiled. He was not given to triumphalism, unlike his two apprentices, who always revelled in the defeat of any opposing team. He realised that if you looked at the overall results, the occasional victory tended to be overshadowed by a line of defeats. It was difficult, being a small country—at least in terms of numbers of people—to compete with more populous lands. If the Kenyans wanted to select a football team, then they had many millions of people to choose from, and the same was true, and even more so, of the South Africans. But Botswana, even if it was a land as wide as the sky and even if it was blessed by those great sunburned spaces, had fewer than two million people from whom to select a football team. That made it difficult to stand up to the big countries, no matter how hard they tried. That applied only to sport, of course. When it came to everything else, then he knew, and was made proud by the knowledge, that Botswana could hold its own—and more. It owed no money; it broke no rules. But of course it was not perfect; every country has done some things of which its people might feel shame. But at least people knew what these things were and could talk about them openly, which made a difference.
But football was special.
“Yes,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “The Zebras played very well. I felt very proud.”
“Ow!” exclaimed the younger apprentice, reaching for the lever that would expose the engine of a car that had been brought in for service. “Ow! Did you see those people from Lusaka crying outside the stadium?”
“Anybody can lose,” cautioned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “You need to remember that every time you win.” He thought of adding, and anybody can cry, even a man , but knew that this would be wasted on the apprentices.
“But we didn’t lose, Boss,” said Charlie. “We won.”
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. He had been tempted to abandon the task of teaching these apprentices anything about life, but persisted nonetheless. He took the view that an apprentice-master should do more than show his apprentices how to change an oil filter and repair brakes. He should show them, preferably by example, how to behave as honourable mechanics. Anybody can be taught to fix a car—did the Japanese not have machines which could build cars without anybody being there to operate them?—but not everybody could meet the standards of an honourable mechanic. Such a person could give advice to the owner of a car; such a person would tell the truth about what was wrong with a car; such a person would think about the best interests of the owner and act accordingly. That was something which had to be passed on from generation to generation of mechanics, and it was not always easy to do that.
He looked at the apprentices. They were due to go off for another spell of training at the Automotive Trades College, but he wondered if it did them any good. He received reports from the college as to how they performed in the academic parts of their training. These reports did not make good reading; although they passed the examinations—just—their lack of seriousness, and their sloppiness, was always commented upon. What have I done to deserve apprentices like this? Mr J.L.B. Matekoni asked himself. He had friends who also took on apprentices, and they often commented on how lucky they were to get young men who very quickly developed sufficient skill to earn their pay, and more. Indeed, one of these friends, who had taken on a young man from Lobatse, had freely admitted that this young man now knew more than he did about cars and was also very good with the customers. It struck Mr J.L.B. Matekoni as very bad luck that he should get two incompetent apprentices at the same time. To get one would have been understandable bad luck; to get two seemed to be a singular misfortune.
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked at his watch. There was no point in wasting time thinking about how things might be if the world were otherwise. There was work to be done that day, and he had an errand which would take him away for much of the morning. Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi had gone off to the post office and the bank and would not be back for a while. It was the end of the month and the banks were always far too busy at such times. It would be better, he thought, if people’s pay days were staggered. Some could be paid at the end of the month, as was traditional, but others could get their wages at other times. He had even thought of writing to the Chamber of Commerce about this, but had decided that there was very little point; there were some things that seemed to be so set in stone that nothing would ever change them. Pay day, he thought, was one of those.