Tears of the Giraffe tnlda-2 Read online

  Mma Potokwane spotted him, as usual, as he parked his car under one of the syringa trees.

  "I see you!" she shouted from her window. "I see you, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni!"

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni waved in her direction as he locked the car. Then he strode towards the office, where the sound of cheerful music drifted out of one of the windows. Inside, Mma Potokwane was sitting beside her desk, a telephone receiver to her ear. She motioned for him to sit down and continued with her conversation.

  "If you can give me some of that cooking oil," she said, "the orphans will be very happy. They like to have their potatoes fried in oil and it is good for them."

  The voice at the other end said something, and she frowned, glancing up at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, as if to share her irritation.

  "But you cannot sell that oil if it is beyond its expiry date. So why should I pay you anything for it? It would be better to give it to the orphans than to pour it down the drain. I cannot give you money for it, and so I see no reason why you shouldn't give it to us."

  Again something was said on the other end of the line, and she nodded patiently.

  "I can make sure that the Daily News comes to photograph you handing the oil over. Everybody will know that you are a generous man. It will be there in the papers."

  There was a further brief exchange and then she replaced the receiver.

  "Some people are slow to give," she said. "It is something to do with how their mothers brought them up. I have read all about this problem in a book. There is a doctor called Dr. Freud who is very famous and has written many books about such people."

  "Is he in Johannesburg?" asked Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

  "I do not think so," said Mma Potokwane. "It is a book from London. But it is very interesting. He says that all boys are in love with their mother."

  "That is natural," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "Of course boys love their mothers. Why should they not do so?"

  Mma Potokwane shrugged. "I agree with you. I cannot see what is wrong with a boy loving his mother."

  "Then why is Dr. Freud worried about this?" went on Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "Surely he should be worried if they did not love their mothers."

  Mma Potokwane looked thoughtful. "Yes. But he was still very worried about these boys and I think he tried to stop them."

  "That is ridiculous," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "Surely he had better things to do with his time."

  "You would have thought so," said Mma Potokwane. "But in spite of this Dr Freud, boys still go on loving their mothers, which is how it should be."

  She paused, and then, brightening at the abandonment of this difficult subject, she smiled broadly at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

  "I am very glad that you came out today. I was going to phone you."

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni sighed. "Brakes? Or the pump?"

  "The pump," said Mma Potokwane. "It is making a very strange noise. The water comes all right, but the pump makes a noise as if it is in pain."

  "Engines do feel pain," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "They tell us of their pain by making a noise."

  "Then this pump needs help," said Mma Potokwane. "Can you take a quick look at it?"

  "Of course," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

  IT TOOK him longer than he had expected, but at last he found the cause and was able to attend to it. The pump reassembled, he tested it, and it ran sweetly once more. It would need a total refit, of course, and that day would not be able to be put off for much longer, but at least the strange, moaning sound had stopped.

  Back in Mma Potokwane's office, he relaxed with his cup of tea and a large slab of currant cake which the cooks had baked that morning. The orphans were well fed. The Government looked after its orphans well and gave a generous grant each year. But there were also private donors-a network of people who gave in money, or kind, to the orphan farm. This meant that none of the orphans actually wanted for anything and none of them was malnourished, as happened in so many other African countries. Botswana was a well-blessed country. Nobody starved and nobody languished in prison for their political beliefs. As Mma Ramotswe had pointed out to him, the Batswana could hold their heads up anywhere-anywhere.

  "This is good cake," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "The children must love it."

  Mma Potokwane smiled. "Our children love cake. If we gave them nothing but cake, they would be very happy. But of course we don't. The orphans need onions and beans too."

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. "A balanced diet," he said widely. "They say that a balanced diet is the key to health."

  There was silence for a moment as they reflected on his observation. Then Mma Potokwane spoke.

  "So you will be a married man soon," she said. "That will make your life different. You will have to behave yourself, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni!"

  He laughed, scraping up the last crumbs of his cake. "Mma Ramotswe will watch me. She will make sure that I behave myself well."

  "Mmm," said Mma Potokwane. "Will you be living in her house or in yours?"

  "I think it will be her house," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "It is a bit nicer than mine. Her house is in Zebra Drive, you know."

  "Yes," said the Matron. "I have seen her place. I drove past it the other day. It looks very nice."

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked surprised. "You drove past specially to take a look?"

  "Well," said Mma Potokwane, grinning slightly. "I thought that I might just see what sort of place it was. It's quite big, isn't it?"

  "It's a comfortable house," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "I think that there will be enough room for us."

  "Too much room," said Mma Potokwane. "There will be room for children."

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni frowned. "We had not been thinking of that. We are maybe a bit old for children. I am forty-five. And then... Well, I do not like to talk about it, but Mma Ramotswe has told me that she cannot have children. She had a baby, you know, but it died and now the doctors have said to her that..."

  Mma Potokwane shook her head. "That is very sad. I am very sad for her."

  "But we are very happy," said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. "Even if we do not have children."

  Mma Potokwane reached over to the teapot and poured her guest another cup of tea. Then she cut a further slice of cake-a generous helping-and slid it onto his plate.

  "Of course, there is always adoption," she said, watching him as she spoke. "Or you could always just look after a child if you didn't want to adopt. You could take..." She paused, raising her teacup to her lips. 'You could always take an orphan." Adding hurriedly: "Or even a couple of orphans."

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni stared at his shoes. "I don't know. I don't think I would like to adopt a child. But..."

  "But a child could come and live with you. There's no need to go to all the trouble of adoption papers and magistrates," said Mma Potokwane. "Imagine how nice that would be!"

  "Maybe... I don't know. Children are a big responsibility."

  Mma Potokwane laughed. "But you're a man who takes responsibility easily. There you are with your garage, that's a responsibility. And those apprentices of yours. They're a responsibility too, aren't they? You are well used to responsibility."

  Mr J.L.B. Matekoni thought of his apprentices. They, too, had just appeared, sidling into the garage shortly after he had telephoned the technical trades college and offered to give two apprenticeships. He had entertained great hopes of them, but had been disappointed virtually from the beginning. When he was their age he had been full of ambition, but they seemed to take everything for granted. At first he had been unable to understand why they seemed so passive, but then all had been explained to him by a friend.

  "Young people these days cannot show enthusiasm," he had been told. "It's not considered smart to be enthusiastic." So this is what was wrong with the apprentices. They wanted to be thought smart.

  On one occasion, when Mr J.L.B. Matekoni felt particularly irritated at seeing the two young men sitting unenthusiastically on their empty oil drums staring into the air he had raised his voice at
them.

  "So you think you're smart?" he shouted. "Is that what you think?"

  The two apprentices had glanced at one another. "No," said one, after a few moments. "No, we don't." He had felt deflated and had slammed the door of his office. It appeared that they lacked the enthusiasm even to respond to his challenge, which just proved what he had thought anyway.

  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 provi
de 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.

  The girl picked up Setswana quite quickly. She found ways of making a few pula by collecting empty bottles from the edge of the road and taking them back to the bottle store for the deposit. She carried the baby on her back, tied in a sling, and never let him leave her sight. I spoke to the nurse about her, and I understand that although she was still a child herself, she was a good mother to the boy. She made his clothes out of scraps that she found here and there, and she kept him clean by washing him under the tap in the nurse's backyard. Sometimes she would go and beg outside the railway station, and I think that people sometimes took pity on them and gave them money, but she preferred to earn it if she could.

  This went on for four years. Then, quite without warning, the girl became ill. They took her back to the hospital and they found that the tuberculosis had damaged the bones very badly. Some of them had crumbled and this was making it difficult for her to walk. They did what they could, but they were unable to prevent her from ending up unable to walk. The nurse scrounged around for a wheelchair, which she was eventually given by one of the Roman Catholic priests. So now she looked after the boy from the wheelchair, and he, for his part, did little chores for his sister.

  The nurse and her husband had to move. The husband worked for a meat-packing firm and they wanted him down in Lobatse. The nurse had heard of the orphan farm, and so she wrote to me. I said that we could take them, and I went up to Francistown to collect them just a few months ago. Now they are with us, as you have seen.

  That is their story, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. That is how they came to be here.