“But I have got money in the Standard Chartered Bank,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I could use that or I could sell some cattle. I still have some cattle that my father left me. They have multiplied. I have almost two hundred now.”

“You must not sell cattle,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “It is good to keep cattle. We must wait.”

He stared at her, almost reproachfully, and Mma Ramotswe looked away. The subject was too awkward, too raw, to be discussed openly, and so she did not pursue the matter. It seemed as if he was frightened of marriage, which must be the reason why he was proving so slow to commit himself. Well, there were men like that; nice men who were fond enough of women but who were wary of getting married. If that was the case, then she would be realistic about it and continue to be an engaged lady. It was not a bad situation to be in, after all; indeed, there were some arguments for preferring an engagement to a marriage. You often heard of difficult husbands, but how often did you hear of difficult fiances? The answer to that, thought Mma Ramotswe, was never.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni left the room, and Mma Ramotswe picked up her mug of bush tea. If she was going to remain an engaged lady, then she would make the most of it, and one of the ways to do this would be to enjoy her free time. She would read a bit more and spend more time on her shopping. And she might also join a club of some sort, if she could find one, or perhaps even form one herself, perhaps something like a Cheerful Ladies’ Club, a club for ladies in whose lives there was some sort of gap-in her case a gap of waiting-but who were determined to make the most of their time. It was a sentiment of which her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, would have approved; her father, that good man who had always used his time to good effect and who was always in her thoughts, as constantly and supportively as if he were buried under the floor directly beneath her.

MMA SILVIA POTOKWANE, the matron of the orphan farm, was sorting out bits of carpeting for a jumble sale. The pieces of carpet were scattered about the ground under a large syringa tree, and she and several of the housemothers were busy placing them in order of desirability. The carpets were not old at all, but were off-cuts which had been donated by a flooring firm in Gaborone. At the end of every job, no matter how careful the carpet layers were, there would always be odd pieces which simply did not fit. Sometimes these were quite large, if the end of a roll had been used, or the room had been a particularly awkward shape. But none of them was square or rectangular, and this meant that their usefulness was limited.

“Nobody has a room this shape,” said one of the housemothers, drawing Mma Potokwane’s attention to a triangular piece of flecked red carpet. “I do not know what we can do with this.”

Mma Potokwane bent down to examine the carpet. It was not easy for her to bend, as she was an unusually traditional shape. She enjoyed her food, certainly, but she was also very active, and one might have thought that all that walking about the orphan farm, peering into every corner just to keep everybody on their toes, would have shed the pounds, but it had not. All the women in her family had been that build, and it had brought them good fortune and success; there was no point, she felt, being a thin and unhappy person when the attractions of being a comfortable person were so evident. And men liked women like that too. It was a terrible thing that the outside world had done to Africa, bringing in the idea that slender ladies, some as thin as a sebokoldi, a millipede, should be considered desirable. That was not what men really wanted. Men wanted women whose shape reminded them of good things on the table.

“It is a very strange shape,” agreed Mma Potokwane. “But if you put together two triangles, then do you not get a square, or something quite close to a square? Do you not think that is true, Mma?”

The housemother looked blank for a moment, but then the wisdom of Mma Potokwane’s suggestion dawned upon her and she smiled broadly. There were other triangular pieces, and she now reached for one of these, and held it in position alongside the awkward red piece. The result was an almost perfect square, even if the two pieces of carpet were a different colour.

Mma Potokwane was pleased with the result. Once they had sorted out the carpets, they would put up a notice in the Tlokweng Community Centre and invite people to a carpet sale. They would have no difficulty in selling everything, she thought, and the money would go into the fund that they were building up for book prizes for the children. At the end of each term, those who had done well would receive a prize for their efforts; an atlas, perhaps, or a Setswana Bible, or some other book which would be useful at school. Although she was not a great reader, Mma Potokwane was a firm believer in the power of the book. The more books that Botswana had, in her view, the better. It would be on books that the future would be based; books and the people who knew how to use them.

It would be wonderful, she thought, to write a book which would help other people. In her case, she would never have the time to do it, and even if she had the time, then she very much doubted whether she would have the necessary ability. But if she were to write a book, then the title would undoubtedly beHow to Run an Orphan Farm. That would be a useful book for whomever took over from her when she retired, or indeed for the many other ladies who ran orphan farms elsewhere. Mma Potokwane had spent some time thinking about the contents of such a work. There would be a great deal about the ordinary day-to-day business of an orphan farm: the arranging of meals, the sorting out of duties and so on. But there would also be a chapter on the psychology which went into running an orphan farm. Mma Potokwane knew a great deal about that. She could tell you, for example, of the importance of keeping brothers and sisters together, if at all possible, and of how to deal with behavioural problems. These were almost always due to insecurity and had one cure and one cure alone: love. That, at least, had been her experience, and even if the message was a simple one, it was, in her view, utterly true.

Another chapter-a very important one-would be on fund raising. Every orphan farm needed to raise money, and this was a task which was always there in the background. Even when you had successfully performed every other task, the problem of money always remained, a persistent, nagging worry at the back of one’s mind. Mma Potokwane prided herself on her competence in this. If something was needed-a new set of pots for one of the houses, or a pair of shoes for a child whose shoes were wearing thin-she would find a donor who could be persuaded to come up with the money. Few people could resist Mma Potokwane, and there had been an occasion when the Vice-President of Botswana himself, a generous man who prided himself on his open door policy, had thought ruefully of those countries where it was inconceivable that any citizen could claim the right to see the second most important person in the country. Mma Potokwane had made him promise to find somebody to sell her building materials, and he had agreed before he had thought much about it. The building materials had been purchased from a firm which was prepared to sell them cheaply, but it had taken up a great deal of time.

At the very head of Mma Potokwane’s list of supporters was Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. She had relied on him for years to take care of various bits of machinery on the orphan farm, including the water pump, which he had now insisted on being replaced, and the minivan in which the orphans were driven into town. This was an old vehicle, exhausted by years of bumping along on the dusty road to the orphanage, and had it not been for Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s expert hand, it would have long since come to the end of its life. But it was a van which he understood, and it was blessed with a Bedford engine that had been built to last and last, like a strong old mule that pulls a cart. The orphan farm could probably afford a new van, but Mma Potokwane saw no reason to spend money on something new when you had something old which was still working.