Now, thinking of children, he wondered whether he would have the energy to deal with them. He was approaching the point in life when he wanted a quiet and orderly time. He wanted to be able to fix engines in his own garage during the day and to spend his evenings with Mma Ramotswe. That would be bliss! Would children not introduce a note of stress into their domestic life? Children needed to be taken to school and put in the bathtub and taken to the nurse for injections. Parents always seemed so worn out by their children and he wondered whether he and Mma Ramotswe would really want that.
"I can tell that you're thinking about it," said Mma Potokwane. "I think your mind is almost made up."
"I don't know..."
"What you should do is just take the plunge," she went on. "You could give the children to Mma Ramotswe as a wedding present. Women love children. She will be very pleased. She'll be getting a husband and some children all on the same day! Any lady would love that, believe me."
"But..."
Mma Potokwane cut him short. "Now there are two children who would be very happy to go and live with you," she said. "Let them come on trial. You can decide after a month or so whether they can stay."
"Two children? There are two?" stuttered Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "I thought..."
"They are a brother and sister," Mma Potokwane went on hurriedly. "We do not like to split up brothers and sisters. The girl is twelve and the boy is just five. They are very nice children."
"I don't know... I would have to..."
"In fact," said Mma Potokwane, rising to her feet. "I think that you have met one of them already. The girl who brought you water. The child who cannot walk."
Mr J.L.B. Matekoni said nothing. He remembered the child, who had been very polite and appreciative. But would it not be rather burdensome to look after a handicapped child? Mma Potokwane had said nothing about this when she had first raised the subject. She had slipped in an extra child-the brother-and now she was casually mentioning the wheelchair, as if it made no difference. He stopped himself. He could be in that chair himself.
Mma Potokwane was looking out of the window. Now she turned to address him.
"Would you like me to call that child?" she asked. "I am not trying to force you, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, but would you like to meet her again, and the little boy?"
The room was silent, apart from a sudden creak from the tin roof, expanding in the heat. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked down at his shoes, and remembered, for a moment, how it was to be a child, back in the village, all those years ago. And remembered how he had experienced the kindness of the local mechanic, who had let him polish trucks and help with the mending of punctures, and who by this kindness had revealed and nurtured a vocation. It was easy to make a difference to other people's lives, so easy to change the little room in which people lived their life.
"Call them," he said. "I would like to see them."
Mma Potokwane smiled. "You are a good man, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni," she said. "I will send word for them to come. They will have to be fetched from the fields. But while we are waiting, I'm going to tell you their story. You listen to this."
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE CHILDREN'S TALE
YOU MUST understand, said Mma Potokwane, that although it is easy for us to criticize the ways of the Basarwa, we should think carefully before we do that. When you look at the life they lead, out there in the Kalahari, with no cattle of their own and no houses to live in; when you think about that and wonder how long you and I and other Batswana would be able to live like that, then you realize that these bushmen are remarkable people.
There were some of these people who wandered around on the edge of the Makadikadi Salt Pans, up on the road over to the Okavango. I don't know that part of the country very well, but I have been up there once or twice. I remember the first time I saw it: a wide, white plain under a white sky, with a few tall palm trees and grass that seemed to grow out of nothing. It was such a strange landscape that I thought I had wandered out of Botswana into some foreign land. But just a little bit farther on it changes back into Botswana and you feel comfortable again.
There was a band of Masarwa who had come up from the Kalahari to hunt ostriches. They must have found water in the salt pans and then wandered on towards one of the villages along the road to Maun. The people up there are sometimes suspicious of Basarwa, as they say that they steal their goats and will milk their cows at night if they are not watched closely.
This band had made a camp about two or three miles outside the village. They hadn't built anything, of course, but were sleeping under the bushes, as they often do. They had plenty of meat-having just killed several ostriches-and were happy to stay there until the urge came upon them to move.
There were a number of children and one of the women had just given birth to a baby, a boy. She was sleeping with him at her side, a little bit away from the others. She had a daughter, too, who was sleeping on the other side of her mother. The mother woke up, we assume, and moved her legs about to be more comfortable. Unfortunately there was a snake at her feet, and she rested her heel on its head. The snake bit her. That's how most snakebites occur. People are asleep on their sleeping mats and snakes come in for the warmth. Then they roll over onto the snake and the snake defends itself.
They gave her some of their herbs. They're always digging up roots and stripping bark off trees, but nothing like that can deal with a lebolobolo bite, which is what this must have been. According to the daughter, her mother died before the baby even woke up. Of course, they don't lose any time and they prepared to bury the mother that morning. But, as you might or might not know, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, when a Mosarwa woman dies and she's still feeding a baby, they bury the baby too. There just isn't the food to support a baby without a mother. That's the way it is.
The girl hid in the bush and watched them take her mother and her baby brother. It was sandy there, and all they could manage was a shallow grave, in which they laid her mother, while the other women wailed and the men sang something. The girl watched as they put her tiny brother in the grave too, wrapped in an animal skin. Then they pushed the sand over them both and went back to the camp.
The moment they had gone, the child crept out and scrabbled quickly at the sand. It did not take her long, and soon she had her brother in her arms. There was sand in the child's nostrils, but he was still breathing. She turned on her heels and ran through the bush in the direction of the road, which she knew was not too far away. A truck came past a short time later, a Government truck from the Roads Department. The driver slowed, and then stopped. He must have been astonished to see a young Mosarwa child standing there with a baby in her arms. Of course he could hardly leave her, even though he could not make out what she was trying to tell him. He was going back to Francistown and he dropped her off at the Nyangabwe Hospital, handing her over to an orderly at the gate.
They looked at the baby, who was thin, and suffering badly from a fungal disease. The girl herself had tuberculosis, which is not at all unusual, and so they took her in and kept her in a TB ward for a couple of months while they gave her drugs. The baby stayed in the maternity nursery until the girl was better. Then, they let them go. Beds on the TB ward were needed for other sick people and it was not the hospital's job to look after a Mosarwa girl with a baby. I suppose they thought that she would go back to her people, which they usually do.
One of the sisters at the hospital was concerned. She saw the girl sitting at the hospital gate and she decided that she had nowhere to go. So she took her home and let her stay in her backyard, in a lean-to shack that they had used for storage but which could be cleared out to provide a room of sorts. This nurse and her husband fed the children, but they couldn't take them into the family properly, as they had two children of their own and they did not have a great deal of money.