Alexander Mccall Smith - Ladies' Detective Agency 05 (16 page)

“You are right, Mma,” he said.
“They are all the daughters of some poor person. They are all children
who have been loved by their parents, and by God himself, and now where are
they? In bars! That is where. Or in the arms of some man. That is also
where.” He paused, looking down at the ground. “I am sorry to use
such strong language, Mma. I am not a man who uses strong language, but when it
comes to this matter, then I am like a dog who has been kicked in the
ribs.”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “It is something that should
make us all angry.”

“Yes,” said Mr Bobologo.
“It should. It should. But what does the Government do about this? Do you
see the Government going down to these bars and chasing these bad girls back to
their villages? Do you see that, Mma?”

Mma Ramotswe mused for a
moment. There were many things, she thought, that one could reasonably expect
the Government to do, but it had never occurred to her that chasing bar girls
back to their villages was one of them. For a moment she imagined the Minister
of Roads, for example, a portly man who inevitably wore a wide-brimmed hat to
shade him from the sun, chasing bar girls down the road to Lobatse, followed,
perhaps, by his Under-Secretary and several clerks from the Ministry. It was an
intriguing picture, and one which would normally have made her smile, but there
was no question of smiling now, in front of the righteous indignation of Mr
Bobologo.

“So I decided—together with some friends,”
continued Mr Bobologo, “that we should do something ourselves. And that
is how we started the House of Hope.”

Mma Ramotswe listened
politely as Mr Bobologo listed the difficulties he had encountered in finding a
suitable building for the House of Hope and how eventually they had obtained a
ruinously expensive lease on a house near the African Mall. It had three
bedrooms and a living room which was not enough, he explained, for the fourteen
girls who lived there. “Sometimes we have even had as many as twenty bad
girls in that place,” he said. “Twenty girls, Mma! All under one
roof. When it is that full, then there is not enough room for anybody to do
anything. They must sleep on the floor and doubled-up in bunks. That is not a
good thing, because when things get that crowded they run away and we have to
look for them again and persuade them to come back. It is very
trying.”

Mma Ramotswe was intrigued. If the girls ran away, then
it implied that they were kept there against their will, which surely could not
be the case. You could keep children in one place against their will, but you
could not do that to bar girls, if they were over eighteen. There were
obviously details of the House of Hope which would require further
investigation.

“Would you show me this place, Rra?” she
asked. “I can drive you down there in my van if you would show me. Then I
will be able to understand the work that you are doing.”

Mr
Bobologo seemed to weigh this request for a moment, but then he rose to his
feet, taking his glasses off and stowing them in his top pocket. “I am
happy to do that, Mma. I am happy for people to see what we are doing so that
they may tell other people about it. Perhaps they will even tell the Government
and persuade them to give us money so that we can run the House of Hope on a
proper basis. There is never ever enough money, and we have to rely on what we
can get from churches and some generous people. The Government should pay for
this, but do they help us? The answer to that, Mma, is no. The Government is
not concerned about the welfare of ladies in this country. They think only of
new roads and new buildings. That is what they think of.”

“It is very unfair,” agreed Mma Ramotswe. “I also have a
list of things that I think the Government should do.”

“Oh
yes?” said Mr Bobologo. “And what is on your list, Mma?”

This question caught Mma Ramotswe by surprise. She had spoken of her list
idly, as a conversational ploy; there was no list, really.

“So?” pressed Mr Bobologo. “So what is on this list of
yours, Mma?”

Mma Ramotswe thought wildly. “I would like to
see boys taught how to sew at school,” she said. “That is on my
list.”

Mr Bobologo stared at her. “But that is not
possible, Mma,” he said dismissively. “That is not something that
boys wish to learn. I am not surprised that the Government is not trying to
teach boys this thing. You cannot teach boys to be girls. That is not good for
boys.”

“But boys wear clothes, do they not, Rra?”
countered Mma Ramotswe. “And if these clothes are torn, then who is there
to sew them up?”

“There are girls to do that,” said
Mr Bobologo. “There are girls and ladies. There are plenty of people in
Botswana to do all the necessary sewing. That is a fact. I am a very
experienced teacher and I know about these matters. Do you have anything else
on your list, Mma?”

There would have been a time when Mma
Ramotswe would not have allowed this to pass, but she was on duty now, and
there was no need to antagonise Mr Bobologo. She owed it to her client to find
out more about him, and that was a more immediate duty than her duty to the
women of Botswana. So she merely looked up at the sky, as if looking for
inspiration.

“I would like the Government to do many
things,” she said. “But I do not want to make them too tired. So I
shall have to think about my list and make it a bit smaller.”

Mr
Bobologo looked at her approvingly. “I think that is very wise, Mma. If
one asks for too many things at the same time, then one does not usually get
them. If you ask for one thing, then you may get that one thing. That is what I
have found in life.”

“Ow!” exclaimed Mma Ramotswe.
“You are a clever man, Rra!”

Mr Bobologo acknowledged the
compliment with a brief nod of the head, and then indicated that he was now
ready to follow Mma Ramotswe to the van. She stood aside and invited him to
precede her, as was proper when dealing with a teacher. Whatever Mr Bobologo
might prove to be like, he was first and foremost a teacher, and Mma Ramotswe
believed very strongly that teachers should be treated with respect, as they
always had been before the old Botswana morality had started to unravel. Now
people treated teachers like anybody else, which was a grave mistake; no wonder
children were so cheeky and ill-behaved. A society that undermined its teachers
and their authority only dug away at its own sure foundations. Mma Ramotswe
thought this was obvious; the astonishing thing was that many people simply did
not understand that this was the case. But there was a great deal that people
did not understand and would only learn through bitter experience. In her view,
one of these things was the truth of the old African saying that it takes an
entire village to raise a child. Of course it does; of course it does.
Everybody in a village had a role to play in bringing up a child—and
cherishing it—and in return that child would in due course feel
responsible for everybody in that village. That is what makes life in society
possible. We must love one another and help one another in our daily lives.
That was the traditional African way and there was no substitute for it.
None.

IT WAS only a few minutes’ drive from the
teachers’ quarters to the House of Hope, a drive during which Mr Bobologo
held on firmly to the side of the passenger seat, as if fearing that any moment
Mma Ramotswe would steer the tiny white van off the road. Mma Ramotswe noticed
this, but said nothing; there were some men who would never be happy with women
drivers, even although the statistics were plain for them to see. Women had
fewer accidents because they drove more sedately and were not trying to prove
anything to anybody. It was men who were the reckless
drivers—particularly young men (such as the apprentices) who felt that
girls would be more impressed by speed than by safety. And it was young men in
red cars who were the most dangerous of all. Such people were best given a wide
berth, both in and out of the car.

“That is the House of
Hope,” said Mr Bobologo. “You can park under the tree here.
Carefully, Mma. You do not wish to hit the tree. Careful!”

“I have never hit a tree in my life,” retorted Mma Ramotswe.
“But I have known many men who have hit trees, Rra. Some of those men are
late now.”

“It may not have been their fault,”
muttered Mr Bobologo.

“Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe evenly.
“It could have been the fault of the trees. That is always
possible.”

She was incensed by his remark and struggled to
contain her anger. Unfortunately, her battle with her righteous indignation
overcame her judgment, and she hit the tree; not hard, but with enough of a
jolt to make Mr Bobologo grab onto his seat once again.

“There,” he said, turning to her in triumph. “You have
hit the tree, Mma.”

Mma Ramotswe turned off the engine and closed
her eyes. Clovis Andersen, author of her professional vade mecum,
The
Principles of Private Detection,
had advice which was appropriate to this
occasion, and Mma Ramotswe now called it to mind.
Never allow your personal
feelings to cloud the issue
, he had written.
You may be seething with
anger over something, but do not—and I repeat not—do not allow it
to overcome your professional judgment. Keep your calm. That is the most
important thing. And if you find it difficult, close your eyes and count to
ten.

By the time she reached ten, Mr Bobologo had opened his door
and was waiting for her outside. So Mma Ramotswe swallowed hard and joined him,
following him up the short garden path that led to the doorway of an
unexceptional white-washed house, of much the same sort as could be seen on any
nearby street, and which from the road would never have been
identified—without special knowledge—as a house of hope, or indeed
of despair, or of anything else for that matter. It was just a house, and yet
here it was, filled to the brim with bad girls.

“Here we are,
Mma,” said Mr Bobologo as he approached the front door. “Take up
hope all you who enter here. That is what we say, and one day we shall have it
written above the door.”

Mma Ramotswe looked at the
unprepossessing door. Her reservations about Mr Bobologo were growing, but she
was not quite sure why this should be so. He was irritating, of course, but so
were many people, and being irritating was not enough for him to be written
off. No, there was something more than that. Was it smugness, or singularity of
purpose? Perhaps that was it. It was always disconcerting to meet those who had
become so obsessed with a single topic that they could not see their concerns
in context. Such people were uncomfortable company purely because they lacked
normal human balance, and this, she thought, might be the case with Mr
Bobologo. And yet she had not been asked to find out whether Mr Bobologo was an
interesting man, or even a nice man. She had been asked to find out whether he
was after Mma Holonga’s money. That was a very specific question, and her
feelings for Mr Bobologo had nothing to do with the answer to that question. So
she would give him the benefit of the doubt, and keep her personal opinions to
herself. She herself would never marry Mr Bobologo—or any man like
him—but it would be wrong of her to interfere until she had very concrete
proof of the exact issue at stake. And that had not yet appeared, and might
never appear. So for the time being, the only thing to do was to concentrate on
inspecting the House of Hope and wait until Mr Bobologo put a foot wrong and
gave himself away. And she had a feeling now—a fairly strong
feeling—that he might never do that.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

MR J.L.B. MATEKONI RECEIVES THE
BUTCHER’S CAR; THE APPRENTICES RECEIVE AN ANONYMOUS LETTER

W
HILE MMA RAMOTSWE was visiting Mr Bobologo and his House of
Hope, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was completing a tricky repair at Tlokweng Road Speedy
Motors. He was relieved, of course, about the cancellation of the parachute
jump, but at the same time he was concerned about the fact that one of the
apprentices was going to do it in his stead. He knew that these boys were
feckless, and he knew that they would do anything to impress girls, but he was
their apprentice-master, after all, and he considered that he had a moral
responsibility for them until they had served out their apprenticeship. Many
people would say that this did not extend to cover what they did in their own
time, but Mr J.L.B. Matekoni was not one to take a narrow view of these matters
and he could not avoid feeling at least slightly paternal towards these young
men, irritating though they undoubtedly were. He was not sure, though, how he
could deal with this issue. If he persuaded the young man not to jump, then Mma
Potokwane might insist that he do the jump after all. If she did so, then that
would lead to a row between her and Mma Ramotswe, and that could become
complicated. There might be no more fruit cake, for example, and he would miss
his trips out to see the orphans, even if he was inevitably given some task to
perform the moment he arrived at the orphan farm.