Mma Ramotswe folded her arms. “I am happy to hear that,” she said. “How many people can say that in these troubled times? Ever since women allowed men to think that they did not need to get married, everything has gone wrong. That is what I think, Mma.”
Poppy thought for a moment. “I think you may be right,” she said. “Look at the mess. Look at what all this unfaithfulness has done. People are dying because of that, aren’t they? Many people are dying.”
For a moment the three of them were silent. There was no gainsaying what Poppy had said. It was just true. Just true.
“But I have not come to talk about that,” said Poppy. “I have come because I am very frightened. I am frightened that I am going to lose my job, and if I do, then how are we going to pay for the house we have bought? All my wages go on the payments for that, Mma. Every thebe. So if I lose my job we shall have to move, and you know how difficult it is to get somewhere nice to live. There are just not enough houses.”
Mma Ramotswe took up a pen from her desk and twined her fingers about it. Yes, this woman was right. She, Mma Ramotswe, was fortunate in owning her house in Zebra Drive. If she had to try to buy it today it would be impossible. How did people survive when housing was so expensive? It was a bit of a mystery to her.
Poppy was looking at her.
“Please go on, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I hope you don’t mind if I fiddle with this pen. I am still listening to you. It is easier to listen if one has something to do with one’s hands.”
Poppy made a gesture of assent. “I do not mind, Mma. You can fiddle. I will carry on talking and will tell you why I am frightened. But first I must tell you a little bit about my job, as you must know this if you are to help me.
“I was always interested in cooking, Mma. When I was a girl I was always the one in the kitchen, cooking all the food for the family. My grandmother was the one who taught me. She had always cooked and she could make very simple food taste very good. Maize meal. Sorghum. Those very plain things tasted very good when my grandmother had added her herbs to them. Herbs or a little bit of meat if we were lucky, or even chopped-up Mopani worms. Oh, those were very good. I cannot resist Mopani worms, Mma. Can you?”
“No Motswana can resist them,” said Mma Ramotswe, smiling. “I would love to have some right now, but I’m sorry, Mma …”
Poppy took a sip of her tea. “Yes, Mopani worms! Anyway, I went off to do a catering course in South Africa. I was very lucky to get a place on it, and a scholarship too. It was one whole year and I learned a very great deal about cooking while I was on it. I learned how to cook for one hundred, two hundred people, as easily as we cook for four or five people. It is not all that difficult, you know, Mma Ramotswe, as long as you get the quantities right.
“I came back to Botswana and got my first job up at one of the diamond mines, the one at Orapa. They have canteens for the miners there, and I was assistant to one of the chefs in charge of that. It was very hard work and those miners were very hungry! But I learned more and more, and I also met my husband, who was a senior cook up there. He cooked in the guest house that the mining company had for their visitors. They liked to give these visitors good food and the man I married was the cook who did that.
“My husband decided one day that he had had enough of living up at the diamond mine. ‘There is nothing to do here,’ he said. ‘There is just dust and more dust.’
“I said to him that we should not move until we had made more money, but he was fed up and wanted to come to Gaborone. Fortunately, he got a job very easily through somebody who had stayed in the guest house and who knew that the President Hotel was looking for another chef. So he came down here, and I soon found a job at that college, the big new one which they built over that way—you know the place, Mma. I was very happy with this job and I was happy that we were able to live in Gaborone, where everything is happening and where it is not just dust, dust, dust.
“And everything went very well. I was not the senior cook—there is another woman who has that job. She is called Mma Tsau. She was very good to me and she made sure that I got a pay-rise after I had been there one year. I was very happy, until I discovered something bad that was going on.
“Mma Tsau has a husband, whom I had seen about the place once or twice. One day, one of the cleaning ladies said to me, ‘That man is eating all the food, you know. He is eating all the best food.’
“I had no idea what this lady meant, and so I asked her which man she was talking about. She told me that it was Mma Tsau’s husband and that there was a storeroom in the college where he came for a meal from time to time and was given all the best meat by his wife. On other days, she said, Mma Tsau would take home packets of the best meat to cook for her husband at their house. This food belonged to the college, she said, but it went straight into the mouth of Mma Tsau’s husband, who was getting fatter and fatter as a result of all these good meals he was having.
“I did not believe this at first. I had noticed that he was a very fat man, but I had thought that this must be because he was married to a good cook. The husbands of good cooks are often fatter than other men—and that is natural, I suppose.
“I decided one day to see whether what the cleaning lady had told me was true. I had noticed that at lunchtimes Mma Tsau used to leave the kitchen from time to time, but I was always so busy that I hardly paid any attention to it. There is always something happening in a busy kitchen, and there are many reasons why the head cook may need to leave the stoves for a short time. There are supplies to be checked up on. There are telephones to answer. There are assistants to chase up.
“On that day I kept an eye on Mma Tsau. She went outside at one point to call one of the helpers, who was standing outside in the sun and not doing enough work. I looked out of the window and saw her shaking a finger at this woman and shouting at her, but I did not hear what she said. I had a good idea of it, though.
“Then, a few minutes later, I noticed that she went to the door of one of the warming ovens and took out a covered dish. It was an oven that we never used, as we had too much capacity in that kitchen. She took this dish, which was covered by a metal plate, and went out of the kitchen. I moved over to a window and saw her walking towards a small block near the kitchen. There was an old office there, which was not used any more, and a storeroom. She went in, was inside for a few moments, and then came out again, without the dish, but wiping her hands on her apron.
“I waited a few minutes. Mma Tsau was now busy supervising the assistants who were dishing out the stew to the students. She was telling them that they should not give helpings that were too generous, or there would not be enough for the students who came in for their lunch a bit later. I overheard her telling one of them that they should not give more food to those students whom they liked, who smiled at them when they reached the head of the line, or who were related to them. I could not believe that I was hearing that, if what I thought I had just seen was true. I think that you should not say one thing and then do exactly the opposite yourself, should you, Mma Ramotswe? No. That is what I thought too.
“This was now the best time for me to leave the kitchen, while Mma Tsau was lecturing the assistant. I went outside and ran across to the block which I had seen her enter. I had decided that the best thing to do would be to pretend to be looking for something, and so I did not knock on the door, but just pushed it open. There was a man inside, that fat man, the husband of Mma Tsau. He was sitting at a small table with a large plate of steak in front of him. There were vegetables too—some potatoes with gravy on them and a pile of carrots. He had a bottle of tomato sauce on the table in front of him and a copy ofThe Daily News , which he was reading as he ate.