“Do you know anybody who might be going there?” she asked.
He scratched his head for a moment. “Well, as it happens,” he said, “I do know a nurse who goes to help in the clinic there quite regularly. She can’t drive all the way to the village because the tracks are too narrow and bumpy. But she goes within about four or five miles of it and then walks the rest.”
Precious was excited to hear this. “Do you think Nancy and I could go with her?” she said. “We’d be careful.”
He looked doubtful. “I don’t know, my darling. It’s a long way and it’s quite wild out there, you know.”
“We’d be very careful,” said Precious. “I promise you.”
Obed Ramotswe knew that his daughter was a very responsible girl, and that if she said she would be very careful, then she would be very careful.
“Very well,” he said. “You can go. But make sure that Nancy gets permission too.”
“I shall,” said Precious.
That night as she lay in bed sleep was slow to come to her. But when it eventually did, she dreamed a lot. She dreamed that she was walking through the bush with Nancy. She dreamed that they were both in some sort of danger. She tossed and turned and eventually woke up. The dream faded quickly, as dreams often do – even bad ones. But she did remember that she had felt very frightened, which is how you usually feel when you are in danger, even if you don’t know or can’t remember exactly what the danger is.
But it did not put her off. Precious was one of the bravest girls in Botswana, and it would take more than a dream to put her off once she had started working on a case. And so she told Nancy about her plan, and went with her friend to obtain permission to go off on their trip with the nurse.
Nancy was allowed to go, especially since her aunt knew the nurse and knew how careful she would be. So the aunt said yes and made several meals for the girls to take with them. There were sandwiches and cake. There were two cans of orange juice and four apples – two for each girl. Armed with these supplies, and with various other bits and pieces that Precious had gathered together, the two girls, accompanied by Obed Ramotswe, went off to meet the nurse at the crossroads where she said she would pick them up. They were both very excited. This was, in fact, the most exciting thing that Precious Ramotswe had ever done in her entire life.
Obed Ramotswe had some parting words for his daughter and her friend: “When you get there,” he said’ “make sure you go straight to my cousin’s place. She’ll be expecting you.”
“We shall,” said Precious. “Don’t worry – we’ll be perfectly all right.”
Her father stayed with them at the crossroads until the nurse drove up in her car. Then he stood there, waving until the car disappeared into a cloud of dust and was gone.
“Be very careful,” he said, as he watched them go. But the wind swallowed his words, and nobody could hear them anyway.
THEY LEFT EARLY in the morning. The drive took four hours, but Precious and Nancy both got a bit of sleep as the car bumped its way over the rough roads. At last they reached the place where the road became a narrow track, and, shortly after that, turned into an even narrower path.
“We’ll leave the car over there,” said the nurse. “That tree will provide some shade for it.”
The girls helped the nurse take her bag out of the car and the three of them then began to make their way along the path to the village. It was obviously not used very much, as it was quite overgrown. In some places it had been more or less washed away by heavy rain; in other places, undergrowth had covered it, making it necessary to pick one’s way through dense bush and beds of tall reeds.
They had been walking for half an hour or so, making very slow progress, when Nancy suddenly let out a sharp cry of pain. Precious, who was walking behind her, rushed up to see what had happened
“A really big thorn,” wailed Nancy. “I’ve trodden on a horrid thorn.”
Precious bent down to examine her friend’s foot. Sure enough, there was a large thorn, broken off on its shaft, embedded in the sole of Nancy’s right foot.
“I’ll take it out,” said Precious. “You lean on my shoulder, close your eyes, and think of something nice. Think of ice cream.”
“What flavour?” Nancy sobbed.
But before an answer could be given, Precious had pulled the thorn out of the foot. “There we are,” she said. “All over.”
Nancy was relieved, but wanted to take a short rest. The nurse, who had been walking in front of them, must have been unaware of the incident, and there was now no sign of her.
“We’ll catch up with her,” said Precious. “We can rest for a few minutes until your foot stops hurting.”
The two girls sat down on the ground. All around them were the sounds of the African bush: the high-pitched screech of crickets, the strange, lonely calls of the birds, the sigh of the breeze in the leaves of the trees – a sound that seemed a little like that of the sea.
At last Precious said that it was time to go. She did not want the nurse to get too far ahead of them, because if the nurse turned round and saw that they were not there she would become alarmed.
“We must hurry,” said Precious. “Are you able to walk a little bit faster?”
Nancy replied that she was, and so Precious set off at a rather faster pace than before. This, I’m afraid to say, was a mistake, because the faster you walk in the bush, the more likely you are to lose your way. And that is exactly what happened.
Precious was not sure where they went wrong. It may have been immediately after their rest, when they took what they thought was the right path, or it may have been later on, when they followed the course of a dry river bed. Or it may have been when they wandered into a thick clump of trees and had difficulty finding their way out again. There are a hundred different ways of getting lost in thick bush like that.
After they had been walking for a while, Precious looked down at the ground. Her father had told her about tracking, and how you can tell who has been there before you by reading what is written in the sand. Now, as she looked down, Precious realised that there were no footprints at all – or at least no footprints of a person, and of the nurse in particular. Nobody had walked that way for a long time – nobody, that is, apart from a warthog and her babies, a small family of antelopes, and, she thought, a baboon or two.
Nancy knew that something was wrong. “Are we lost?” she asked.
Precious looked up at the sky. It is possible to tell what direction you are going in by looking where the sun is. But now, in this unfamiliar place, it seemed to her that they were going back the way they had come, or were even going round in circles.
She answered Nancy’s question carefully. She did not want to alarm her friend. “We might be a little bit lost,” she said. “I’m not sure. Perhaps we should try calling the nurse. We may not be too far behind her.”
They started to call out. They called as loudly as they could, but their voices did not carry very far in that lonely place. Then they shouted out more loudly, and even tried to whistle, but all that greeted their efforts was silence.
“It’s no good,” said Precious at last. “I don’t think anybody can hear us.”
“Then what are we going to do?” asked Nancy in a voice that sounded close to despair.
Precious tried to remember what her father had told her about being lost in the bush. Try to remember how you got to where you are, he had said, then retrace your steps. Go back rather than press on.
“We could try going back,” she said.
“But I don’t remember which way we came,” Nancy said. “And what will we do when we get to the car – even if we find it. Nobody will be there.” She paused. “Can you drive?”
Precious shook her head. “No.” And then she remembered another reason why it would not do much good to go back to the car. “And we don’t have the key,” she added. “You need a key to start the engine, and the nurse has taken it with her.”
For a fe
w minutes they stood where they were, looking about them, uncertain what to do. It was mid-afternoon now, and in a couple of hours it would be dark. Neither of them wanted to be lost in the African bush at night. It was perfectly possible that there were lions not far away, or leopards perhaps. Leopards like to hunt in the hours of darkness, and if they were to meet a leopard ... It was best not to think about what would happen then.
Eventually Precious made up her mind. “We can try to retrace our tracks,” she said. “Then, if we find the path again, we can follow it until we come to the village.
They began to walk back the way they had come. It was slow-going, as the ground was hard and dry, and their footprints were not all that obvious. After half an hour or so, they came to a halt.
“I can’t see any footprints now,” said Precious. “Can you see anything, Nancy?”
Nancy had been gazing at the ground in search of some sign, but had found nothing. She shook her head sadly. “I think we’re still lost,” she said. “Maybe even more lost than we were before.”
It was while they were standing there, trying in vain to work out where they were, that Precious heard an unexpected sound. Without saying anything, she reached out to touch Nancy’s arm. Then, leaning forward, she whispered in her ear, “I think I heard something. Listen.”
The two girls strained their ears. They heard the sound of a bird flying up into a tree – the flutter of wings and a high-pitched bird-call. They heard the rustle of the wind in a reed bed behind them. They heard some tiny sounds that could have been anything – ants, even, marching across tiny grains of sand.
Then they heard something quite different.
“There,” said Precious. “Did you hear that?”
Nancy nodded. It seemed very unlikely – so unlikely, in fact, as to be impossible. But there it was again. It was somebody singing.
THERE IT WAS AGAIN. And now it was getting closer.
“Somebody’s coming,” whispered Nancy.
Precious put a finger to her lips in a gesture of silence. She had worked out that the sound was coming from a thicket of trees not far away. She strained her eyes to see any movement, and then suddenly she saw it. Yes, there was somebody there, coming out of the shadow of the trees. And it was a boy.
The boy was not very tall. He was carrying a small bow – the sort used to shoot arrows – and over his shoulder he had slung a bag made of brown animal skin. He was coming straight towards them, and he was singing, quite unaware of their presence.
Precious stepped forward and greeted him in Setswana, which is the language many people speak in Botswana.
The boy stopped in his tracks. Then, in a sudden movement he dropped to his haunches, whipped an arrow out of the quiver dangling from his belt and pointed the weapon at them.
Precious raised a hand in greeting. “Don’t be frightened,” she said. “It’s just my friend and me. We’re lost.”
The boy stared at them. He must have realised they meant him no harm, for he straightened up and lowered his bow and arrow. Then, very slowly, he advanced towards them.
“Do you know how to get to the village near here?” Precious asked.
The boy looked at her and frowned.
“The village?” Precious repeated.
Nancy had been watching closely. Now she understood. “He doesn’t understand,” she said. “He doesn’t speak our language.”
Suddenly the boy spoke. It sounded strange to them, as he used speech that was half whistle, half words. It was like hearing a bird speaking.
The moment he opened his mouth, Precious knew: this boy was a member of a group of people called the San. They were people who had lived in and around the Kalahari Desert for a long time. They were expert hunters and knew all there was to know about that dry and beautiful place. But how could she communicate with this boy, who had no idea of who they were or where they were going?
Suddenly it came to her. Tapping the boy lightly on the shoulder, she pointed to the ground beneath their feet. She dropped to her knees and began to draw in the sand. She drew a village, with huts and paths. She drew a cattle pen of the sort she knew villages in that part of the country always had next to them. She drew people standing round the huts.
The boy watched very carefully. Then, jabbing at the picture with a finger, he said something more. But once again neither Precious nor Nancy could make out what it was.
The boy pointed. He said something they could not make out, using words that meant nothing to them.
“It must be in that direction,” said Nancy. “He’s showing us.” The boy stood up straight and pointed again. He was looking at Precious as if puzzled as to why she could not understand what he was saying. Then he began to move off, gesturing to them to follow him.
They had wandered further than they had imagined, as they now began a walk that lasted many hours. As the sun began to sink below the horizon, it turned the sky deep red, as if the clouds were on fire. Then, as quickly as the sky had come ablaze, the red turned to dark blue, dotted with tiny points of silver light from thousands and thousands of stars.
Precious made sure she stayed close to the boy, and that Nancy stayed at her side. She did not want to get lost again. She did not want to be wandering around in a place like this, so far from anywhere, so lonely, so dangerous for any unfortunate creatures on their own.
After a couple of hours, the boy signalled for them to stop. He pointed ahead and gestured to the girls to crouch down behind him.
“What is it?” whispered Nancy, her voice wavering with fear.
“I don’t know,” answered Precious. “He’s seen something.”
In the silence of the night, at first it seemed to Precious that the only sound was that of her heart hammering within her. But then another sound caught her attention – the sound of something moving in the bush, something crashing through vegetation.
She sensed immediately that it must be a big creature. Most animals move quite silently, but the bigger ones – elephants, buffalos or rhinos – barge through the undergrowth not caring what they knock down or flatten. The noise she heard definitely came from something big.
She tried to make out shapes in the darkness, but there was no moon, and the stars gave out only a very faint light. She could see the trees, of course, but there was no way of telling what the shapes beneath them were. Until one of them moved – and then she knew. An elephant ... Another shape moved. Two elephants.
Precious knew they were in real danger. Elephants do not like people to get too close to them, and if they do so, they will often charge. If you are charged by an elephant, your only hope is that it will decide not to bother to carry through with its attack. If it does decide to see the charge through, then nothing can save you.
The boy reached for Precious’s hand and began to lead her and Nancy very slowly off to one side. They crept along as silently as they could, hoping that the elephants would not hear them, and they might have succeeded had Nancy not trodden on a large twig. Under her weight the twig broke with a crack that sounded as loud as a pistol shot.
There was a flurry of activity from the elephants. This came along with a trumpeting – a sort of challenge – from one of them. The boy seized Precious by the arm and pulled her behind him. Nancy clung on to Precious’s hand, and the three of them ran as fast as they could through a bed of reeds away from the elephants.
It could all have ended very badly, but fortunately it did not. The elephants decided that whatever had made the noise was no threat and had gone away. They resumed their browsing.
The three children continued. Precious and Nancy were now rather tired and were finding it difficult to keep up with the boy, but they knew that they could not lag behind again. For his part, the boy sensed their exhaustion and stopped to dig up the root of a wild plant. Taking a knife from his quiver, he cut it into several parts and offered it to the girls. He gestured to them to eat.
The root tasted delicious, and because it was so moist it quenc
hed their thirst. But it also seemed to give them the energy to continue, and when they set off on their way again they had no difficulty in keeping up with their young guide.
It was deep into the night when they saw a few lights in the distance. These were lamps from the village, and meant that they were safe.
“We’ve made it,” said Precious.
“Yes,” said Nancy. “Thanks to our new friend.”
People in the village were still awake. Earlier on they had sent out search parties after the nurse had arrived and told them she had become separated from the two girls. These search parties had just returned, only to find that the very people they were looking for had now turned up. Everybody was most relieved.
Obed Ramotswe’s cousin was most relieved of all.
“I was very, very worried,” he said. “The bush is dangerous at night.”
Precious struggled to keep her eyes open. She was extremely tired. “Well, we’re here now,” she said. “Thanks to this ...”
She turned to point to the boy, but he had vanished.
“There was a boy!” she said.
The cousin nodded. “I saw him,” he said. “That was a little San boy. His people live out there. They know how to survive in the bush.”
“I didn’t have time to thank him,” said Precious. “I wanted to tell him how grateful we feel.”
“Don’t worry,” the cousin reassured her. “I think he knows.”
They spoke to the nurse. She had spent hours worrying about them and was crying with relief that they had been found. Then they went off with the cousin and his wife to sleep at their house. They were given a small room with two comfortable sleeping mats, and were offered food. They were too tired to eat, though, and dropped straight off to sleep the moment they lay down.
Precious had vivid dreams that night. There were elephants, and shapes that might have been elephants. There were strange birds. There was a little boy with a bow and arrows. There was her father, smiling at her, saying, You must be more careful, my darling. And in one of her dreams, an elephant said something to her, but it was in elephant language and she could not understand it. So she simply waved to it and the elephant waved back with its trunk before it became a shadow again and disappeared.