We were all afraid of the Zulus, although I had that friend who was a kind Zulu. The Zulus thought they were better than any of us and sometimes they called us women. If there was a fight, it was almost always the Zulus or the Basotho, but never the Batswana. We did not like fighting. Once a drunk Motswana wandered into a Zulu hostel by mistake on a Saturday night. They beat him with sjamboks and left him lying on the road to be run over. Fortunately a police van saw him and rescued him, or he would have been killed. All for wandering into the wrong hostel.
I worked for years in those mines, and I saved all my money. Other men spent it on town women, and drink, and on fancy clothes. I bought nothing, not even a gramophone. I sent the money home to the Standard Bank and then I bought cattle with it. Each year I bought a few cows, and gave them to my cousin to look after. They had calves, and slowly my herd got bigger.
I would have stayed in the mines, I suppose, had I not witnessed a terrible thing. It happened after I had been there for fifteen years. I had then been given a much better job, as an assistant to a blaster. They would not give us blasting tickets, as that was a job that the white men kept for themselves, but I was given the job of carrying explosives for a blaster and helping him with the fuses. This was a good job, and I liked the man I worked for.
He had left something in a tunnel once—his tin can in which he carried his sandwiches—and he had asked me to fetch it. So I went off down the tunnel where he had been working and looked for this can. The tunnel was lit by bulbs which were attached to the roof all the way along, so it was quite safe to walk along it. But you still had to be careful, because here and there were great galleries which had been blasted out of the rock. These could be two hundred feet deep, and they opened out from the sides of the tunnel to drop down to another working level, like underground quarries. Men fell into these galleries from time to time, and it was always their fault. They were not looking where they were walking, or were walking along an unlit tunnel when the batteries in their helmet lights were weak. Sometimes a man just walked over the edge for no reason at all, or because he was unhappy and did not want to live anymore. You could never tell; there are many sadnesses in the hearts of men who are far away from their countries.
I turned a corner in this tunnel and found myself in a round chamber. There was a gallery at the end of this, and there was a warning sign. Four men were standing at the edge of this, and they were holding another man by his arms and legs. As I came round the corner, they lifted him and threw him forwards, over the edge and into the dark. The man screamed, in Xhosa, and I heard what he said. He said something about a child, but I did not catch it all as I am not very good at Xhosa. Then he was gone.
I stood where I was. The men had not seen me yet, but one turned round and shouted out in Zulu. Then they began to run towards me. I turned round and ran back along the tunnel. I knew that if they caught me I would follow their victim into the gallery. It was not a race I could let myself lose.
Although I got away, I knew that those men had seen me and that I would be killed. I had seen their murder and could be a witness, and so I knew that I could not stay in the mines.
I spoke to the blaster. He was a good man and he listened to me carefully when I told him that I would have to go. There was no other white man I could have spoken to like that, but he understood.
Still, he tried to persuade me to go to the police.
“Tell them what you saw,” he said in Afrikaans. “Tell them. They can catch these Zulus and hang them.”
“I don’t know who these men are. They’ll catch me first. I am going home to my place.”
He looked at me and nodded. Then he took my hand and shook it, which is the first time a white man had done that to me. So I called him my brother, which is the first time I had done that to a white man.
“You go back home to your wife,” he said. “If a man leaves his wife too long, she starts to make trouble for him. Believe me. Go back and give her more children.”
So I left the mines, secretly, like a thief, and came back to Botswana in 1960. I cannot tell you how full my heart was when I crossed the border back into Botswana and left South Africa behind me forever. In that place I had felt every day that I might die. Danger and sorrow hung over Johannesburg like a cloud, and I could never be happy there. In Botswana it was different. There were no policemen with dogs; there were no totsis with knives, waiting to rob you; you did not wake up every morning to a wailing siren calling you down into the hot earth. There were not the same great crowds of men, all from some distant place, all sickening for home, all wanting to be somewhere else. I had left a prison—a great, groaning prison, under the sunlight.
When I came home that time, and got off the bus at Mochudi, and saw the kopje and the chief’s place and the goats, I just stood and cried. A man came up to me—a man I did not know—and he put his hand on my shoulder and asked me whether I was just back from the mines. I told him that I was, and he just nodded and left his hand there until I had stopped weeping. Then he smiled and walked away. He had seen my wife coming for me, and he did not want to interfere with the homecoming of a husband.
I had taken this wife three years earlier, although we had seen very little of one another since the marriage. I came back from Johannesburg once a year, for one month, and this was all the life we had had together. After my last trip she had become pregnant, and my little girl had been born while I was still away. Now I was to see her, and my wife had brought her to meet me off the bus. She stood there, with the child in her arms, the child who was more valuable to me than all the gold taken out of those mines in Johannesburg. This was my first-born, and my only child, my girl, my Precious Ramotswe.
Precious was like her mother, who was a good fat woman. She played in the yard outside the house and laughed when I picked her up. I had a cow that gave good milk, and I kept this nearby for Precious. We gave her plenty of syrup too, and eggs every day. My wife put Vaseline on her skin, and polished it, so that she shone. They said she was the most beautiful child in Bechuanaland and women would come from miles away to look at her and hold her.
Then my wife, the mother of Precious, died. We were living just outside Mochudi then, and she used to go from our place to visit an aunt of hers who lived over the railway line near the Francistown Road. She carried food there, as that aunt was too old to look after herself and she only had one son there, who was sick with sufuba and could not walk very far.
I don’t know how it happened. Some people said that it was because there was a storm brewing up and there was lightning that she may have run without looking where she was going. But she was on the railway line when the train from Bulawayo came down and hit her. The engine driver was very sorry, but he had not seen her at all, which was probably true.
My cousin came to look after Precious. She made her clothes, took her to school and cooked our meals. I was a sad man, and I thought: Now there is nothing left for you in this life but Precious and your cattle. In my sorrow, I went out to the cattle post to see how my cattle were, and to pay the herd boys. I had more cattle now, and I had even thought of buying a store. But I decided to wait, and to let Precious buy a store once I was dead. Besides, the dust from the mines had ruined my chest, and I could not walk fast or lift things.
One day I was on my way back from the cattle post and I had reached the main road that led from Francistown to Gaborone. It was a hot day, and I was sitting under a tree by the roadside, waiting for the bus that would go that way later on. I fell asleep from the heat, and was woken by the sound of a car drawing up.
It was a large car, an American car, I think, and there was a man sitting in the back. The driver came up to me and spoke to me in Setswana, although the number plate of the car was from South Africa. The driver said that there was a leak in the radiator and did I know where they might find some water. As it happened, there was a cattle-watering tank along the track to my cattle post, and so I went with the driver and we filled a can with water.<
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When we came back to put the water in the radiator, the man who had been sitting in the back had got out and was standing looking at me. He smiled, to show that he was grateful for my help, and I smiled back. Then I realised that I knew who this man was, and that it was the man who managed all those mines in Johannesburg—one of Mr Oppenheimer’s men.
I went over to this man and told him who I was. I told him that I was Ramotswe, who had worked in his mines, and I was sorry that I had had to leave early, but that it had been because of circumstances beyond my control.
He laughed, and said that it was good of me to have worked in the mines for so many years. He said I could ride back in his car and that he would take me to Mochudi.
So I arrived back in Mochudi in that car and this important man came into my house. He saw Precious and told me that she was a very fine child. Then, after he had drunk some tea, he looked at his watch.
“I must go back now,” he said. “I have to get back to Johannesburg.”
I said that his wife would be angry if he was not back in time for the food she had cooked him. He said this would probably be so.
We walked outside. Mr Oppenheimer’s man reached into his pocket and took out a wallet. I turned away while he opened it; I did not want money from him, but he insisted. He said I had been one of Mr Oppenheimer’s people and Mr Oppenheimer liked to look after his people. He then gave me two hundred rands, and I said that I would use it to buy a bull, since I had just lost one.
He was pleased with this. I told him to go in peace and he said that I should stay in peace. So we left one another and I never saw my friend again, although he is always there, in my heart.
CHAPTER THREE
LESSONS ABOUT BOYS AND GOATS
OBED RAMOTSWE installed his cousin in a room at the back of the small house he had built for himself at the edge of the village when he had returned from the mines. He had originally planned this as a storeroom, in which to keep his tin trunks and spare blankets and the supplies of paraffin he used for cooking, but there was room for these elsewhere. With the addition of a bed and a small cupboard, and with a coat of whitewash applied to the walls, the room was soon fit for occupation. From the point of view of the cousin, it was luxury almost beyond imagination; after the departure of her husband, six years previously, she had returned to live with her mother and her grandmother and had been required to sleep in a room which had only three walls, one of which did not quite reach the roof. They had treated her with quiet contempt, being old-fashioned people, who believed that a woman who was left by her husband would almost always have deserved her fate. They had to take her in, of course, but it was duty, rather than affection, which opened their door to her.
Her husband had left her because she was barren, a fate which was almost inevitable for the childless woman. She had spent what little money she had on consultations with traditional healers, one of whom had promised her that she would conceive within months of his attentions. He had administered a variety of herbs and powdered barks and, when these did not work, he had turned to charms. Several of the potions had made her ill, and one had almost killed her, which was not surprising, given its contents, but the barrenness remained and she knew that her husband was losing patience. Shortly after he left, he wrote to her from Lobatse and told her—proudly—that his new wife was pregnant. Then, a year and a half later, there came a short letter with a photograph of his child. No money was sent, and that was the last time she heard from him.
Now, holding Precious in her arms, standing in her own room with its four stout, whitewashed walls, her happiness was complete. She allowed Precious, now four, to sleep with her in her bed, lying awake at night for long hours to listen to the child’s breathing. She stroked her skin, held the tiny hand between her fingers, and marvelled at the completeness of the child’s body. When Precious slept during the afternoon, in the heat, she would sit beside her, knitting and sewing tiny jackets and socks in bright reds and blues, and brush flies away from the sleeping child.
Obed, too, was content. He gave his cousin money each week to buy food for the household and a little extra each month for herself. She husbanded resources well, and there was always money left over, which she spent on something for Precious. He never had occasion to reprove her, or to find fault in her upbringing of his daughter. Everything was perfect.
The cousin wanted Precious to be clever. She had had little education herself, but had struggled at reading, and persisted, and now she sensed the possibilities for change. There was a political party, now, which women could join, although some men grumbled about this and said it was asking for trouble. Women were beginning to speak amongst themselves about their lot. Nobody challenged men openly, of course, but when women spoke now amongst themselves, there were whispers, and looks exchanged. She thought of her own life; of the early marriage to a man she had barely met, and of the shame of her inability to bear children. She remembered the years of living in the room with three walls, and the tasks which had been imposed upon her, unpaid. One day, women would be able to sound their own voice, perhaps, and would point out what was wrong. But they would need to be able to read to do that.
She started by teaching Precious to count. They counted goats and cattle. They counted boys playing in the dust. They counted trees, giving each tree a name: crooked one; one with no leaves; one where mopani worms like to hide; one where no bird will go. Then she said: “If we chop down the tree which looks like an old man, then how many trees are there left?” She made Precious remember lists of things—the names of members of the family, the names of cattle her grandfather had owned, the names of the chiefs. Sometimes they sat outside the store nearby, the Small Upright General Dealer, and waited for a car or a truck to bump its way past on the pothole-pitted road. The cousin would call out the number on the registration plate and Precious would have to remember it the next day when she was asked, and perhaps even the day after that. They also played a variety of Kim’s Game, in which the cousin would load a basket-work tray with familiar objects and a blanket would then be draped over it and one object removed.
“What has been taken from the tray?”
“An old marula pip, all gnarled and chewed up.”
“And what else?”
“Nothing.”
She was never wrong, this child who watched everybody and everything with her wide, solemn eyes. And slowly, without anybody ever having intended this, the qualities of curiosity and awareness were nurtured in the child’s mind.
By the time Precious went to school at the age of six, she knew her alphabet, her numbers up to two hundred, and she could recite the entire first chapter of the Book of Genesis in the Setswana translation. She had also learnt a few words of English, and could declaim all four verses of an English poem about ships and the sea. The teacher was impressed and complimented the cousin on what she had done. This was virtually the first praise that she had ever received for any task she had performed; Obed had thanked her, and done so often, and generously, but it had not occurred to him to praise her, because in his view she was just doing her duty as a woman and there was nothing special about that.
“We are the ones who first ploughed the earth when Modise (God) made it,” ran an old Setswana poem. “We were the ones who made the food. We are the ones who look after the men when they are little boys, when they are young men, and when they are old and about to die. We are always there. But we are just women, and nobody sees us.”
Lessons About Boys
Mma Ramotswe thought: God put us on this earth. We were all Africans then, in the beginning, because man started in Kenya, as Dr Leakey and his Daddy have proved. So, if one thinks carefully about it, we are all brothers and sisters, and yet everywhere you look, what do you see? Fighting, fighting, fighting. Rich people killing poor people; poor people killing rich people. Everywhere, except Botswana. That’s thanks to Sir Seretse Khama, who was a good man, who invented Botswana and made it a good place. She still cried for
him sometimes, when she thought of him in his last illness and all those clever doctors in London saying to the Government: “We’re sorry but we cannot cure your President.”
The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That’s how most people thought.
Precious Ramotswe had learned about good and evil at Sunday School. The cousin had taken her there when she was six, and she had gone there every Sunday without fail until she was eleven. That was enough time for her to learn all about right and wrong, although she had been puzzled—and remained so—when it came to certain other aspects of religion. She could not believe that the Lord had walked on water—you just couldn’t do that—nor had she believed the story about the feeding of the five thousand, which was equally impossible. These were lies, she was sure of it, and the biggest lie of all was that the Lord had no Daddy on this earth. That was untrue because even children knew that you needed a father to make a child, and that rule applied to cattle and chickens and people, all the same. But right and wrong—that was another matter, and she had experienced no difficulty in understanding that it was wrong to lie, and steal, and kill other people.
If people needed clear guidelines, there was nobody better to do this than Mma Mothibi, who had run the Sunday School at Mochudi for over twelve years. She was a short lady, almost entirely round, who spoke with an exceptionally deep voice. She taught the children hymns, in both Setswana and English, and because they learned their singing from her the children’s choir all sang an octave below everybody else, as if they were frogs.
The children, dressed in their best clothes, sat in rows at the back of the church when the service had finished and were taught by Mma Mothibi. She read the Bible to them, and made them recite the Ten Commandments over and over again, and told them religious stories from a small blue book which she said came from London and was not available anywhere else in the country.