"Is there somebody in the village who can take me out there?" asked Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Tsbago thought for a moment.
"There are still some people who worked out there," she said. "There is a friend of my uncle. He had a job out there for a while. We can go to his place and you can ask him."
THEY WENT first to Mma Tsbago's house. It was a traditional Botswana house, made out of ochre mud bricks and surrounded by a low wall, a lomotana, which created a tiny yard in front of and alongside the house. Outside this wall there were two thatched grain bins, on raised legs, and a chicken house. At the back, made out of tin and leaning dangerously, was the privy, with an old plank door and a rope with which the door could be tied shut. The children ran out immediately, and embraced their mother, before waiting shyly to be introduced to the stranger. Then, from the dark interior of the house, there emerged the grandmother, wearing a threadbare white dress and grinning toothlessly.
Mma Tsbago left her bag in the house and explained that she would return within an hour. Mma Ramotswe gave sweets to the children, which they received with both palms upturned, thanking her gravely in the correct Setswana manner. These were children who would understand the old ways, thought Mma Ramotswe, approvingly-unlike some of the children in Gaborone.
They left the house and drove through the village in the white van. It was a typical Botswana village, a sprawling collection of one- or two-room houses, each in its own yard, each with a motley collection of thorn trees surrounding it.