That’s right, Boss. You trust in us. We know where we’re going.

That, she thought, was exactly what one would want to hear of boots. It did not matter so much with ordinary town shoes, but it mattered a great deal with boots. If one were going into danger-and the Okavango Delta was filled with wild animals-then it would undoubtedly be a good thing to have shoes that could look after themselves in difficult conditions.

That’s us, Boss! said the boots. That’s us, all right.

She continued walking, coming to the end of Odi Drive and turning onto Maratadiba Road. There were deserted houses on that corner-old buildings now half eaten by termites, half covered in the bush that grows so quickly over human efforts. It was a good place for snakes, she thought; even here in the city, in these forgotten corners of wasteland, snakes might make their homes: cobras, puff adders, even mambas. She glanced at the tangle of vegetation that had been brought by the recent rains. Everything greened so quickly, transformed from thinness and brownness, thickened, ran riot. She gazed at the derelict windows, their glass broken; at the bulging walls that would surely soon collapse. Yes, there were snakes there, but she had these boots, and that was exactly what boots were for.

She stopped. She looked behind her, back in the direction of Tlokweng. The radio had spoken of rain, and the sky confirmed the forecast. A bank of purple cloud had built up to the east, and even as she had been walking from the shops it had grown in size and anger. Now it filled half the sky; to the west it was light and sunny, to the east it was storms and rain. It happened so quickly, the clouds sweeping in within minutes. And with them was that smell of rain, that half dusty smell that was like no other, overpowering in the intensity of its associations for anyone raised in a dry country. It was synonymous with joy, with renewal, with life itself.

Pula, she muttered; a word that stood for so much, that meant joy, and money, and rain. And rain it was, with initial, fat drops falling on the dusty ground to make a tiny crater in the sand; and then another million such craters before the ground became a shimmer of water. It was so sudden, and she looked around as the water began to stream down her face. It was in her eyes; warm and welcome, but to be wiped away so that she could see through the watery curtain of white that was all about her.

The only place to shelter was one of the deserted houses, almost obscured now in the torrent of the storm. She ran, her boots making her sure-footed in the water and mud. There was a door, which stood ajar, and beyond it a room in which the ceiling boards hung down in fragments. All this work, all this human effort, all brought to this.

With the storm outside, the room was darkened further than what must have been its usual gloom. She looked about her. The concrete floor was shattered here and there, as if by small, localised earthquakes. There was a smell, and there was a person, a man sitting on his haunches at the far end of the room, staring at her. He was an old man, and his face was criss-crossed by lines. She saw his eyes, though, which caught the light, dim though it was, from what had once been the window.

She gave a start. The man smiled. “Do not be afraid, Mma. This is my house, but you are welcome to shelter from the rain.”

She took in what was on the floor. A bag from which a few old clothes, rags really, spilled. A few cans, open and abandoned. A single bicycle wheel, salvaged for some reason and then forgotten.

She took a step forward, and then another. She squatted down beside him, remembering this easy, chairless way of sitting that is so natural in Africa.

“I come from up there,” the old man said, pointing north.

She nodded. He spoke Setswana in the accent of an age ago.

“So this is your house,” she said. “I always thought that there was nobody here.”

“There is always somebody,” he said.

Mma Makutsi looked up at the failed ceiling. The drumming of the rain on the roof was less insistent now. She would be able to continue her walk soon. She reached into the pocket of her blouse. She had a fifty-pula note in it, now damp from the rain. She gave it to the man, and he took it, examining it carefully as one might examine an important document.

“Thank you, Mma. You do not have to pay to visit my house, though.”

“This is a present, Rra. It is not payment.”

He put the note away, somewhere in the rags that were his clothes. Then they waited, in silence, for the storm to abate and for the sky to appear again. Mma Makutsi rose to her feet and went to look out of the door. There were stretches of water where once there had been red earth. These would drain quickly, as the water percolated deep down into the thirsty heart of Botswana, somewhere far below the Kalahari.

She turned to say goodbye to the man whose house she had visited. He raised a hand and smiled. She thought: This is the first time I have given anybody fifty pula. It felt very strange; very satisfactory.

On the way out, her shoes suddenly addressed her. The boots were silent, having to cope with the challenge of the wet that was all about. But this came from the shoes in the bag, who said, quite clearly, We saw that, Boss. We were proud.

SHORTLY BEFORE FIVE O’CLOCK, Mma Makutsi left her house in Extension 2 and walked down to the end of the road to catch a minibus. Her destination was Phuti’s aunt’s house. This aunt lived on a small road off Limpopo Drive, in an area known as Extension 22, on the eastern boundary of the town. Mma Makutsi knew very little about her, and indeed was not sure that she even knew her name; Phuti simply called her Aunty, although sometimes he used the term No. 1 Aunty. Mma Makutsi had seen the house before, as she had once driven past it and Phuti had said, “That place in there is the house of my No. 1 Aunty. That is her car.” Mma Makutsi had not liked the look of the car, an old brown vehicle with very small windows; it was not a friendly car, she felt.

The minibus dropped her at the end of Limpopo Drive and she walked the last half a mile or so to the aunt’s house. The aunt would not be expecting her, and she was worried about the reception she would get. Phuti had not telephoned, and that worried her, but she had assumed that he had been adjusting to being out of hospital and would get round to phoning in due course.

As she stood in front of the house, noting, with regret, that the unwelcoming brown car was parked prominently before the veranda, she asked herself why she should not visit her fiancé. Even if he was staying with a relative who clearly did not like her, she was his fiancée and she was entitled to see him. She was not going to encourage him to leave the aunt-it was probably a good place for him to stay while he was recovering, as it would be difficult, if he moved to her place, for her to give him her full attention while working. And yet the aunt was jealous, and hostile, and this visit would not be easy.

She opened the gate and began to walk up to the front veranda. There was a mopipi tree in front of the house and a wild fig, a moumo, to the side. There were aloes too, in flower: a bed of flaming red planted right up against the house, like a row of angry spears. She remembered that being used as a purgative: her own aunt knew all about the traditional uses of these plants, and would recommend aloe when purging was required. Phuti’s aunt might benefit from a dose of aloes, she said to herself, and smiled at the thought.

There was a button to the side of the door with RING HERE written beside it. This was unusual: people did not bother with bells, usually, being content with an old-fashioned knock. She pressed the bell, but no sound came from within. She pressed it again, and then knocked loudly, calling out, “Ko! Ko!”