Alexander Mccall Smith - Ladies' Detective Agency 05 Read Free Page A

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 be
How 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