Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni moved towards the car and opened the driver’s door. He would never mention the fact to Mma Mateleke, but he did not like her car. He found it difficult to put his finger on it, but there was something about it that he distrusted. Now, sitting in the driver’s seat and turning the key in the ignition, he had a very strong sense that he was up against electronics. In the old days-as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni called everything that took place more than ten years ago-you would never have had to bother very much about electronics, but now, with so many cars concealing computer chips in their engines, it was a different matter. “You should take this car to a computer shop,” he had been tempted to say on a number of occasions. “It is really a computer, you know.”

The ignition was, as Mma Mateleke had reported, quite unresponsive. Sighing, he leaned under the dashboard to find the lever that would open the bonnet, but there was no lever. He turned to unwind the window so that he could ask Mma Mateleke where the lever was, but the windows, being electric, would not work. He opened the door.

“How do you get at the engine on this car?” he asked. “I can’t see the lever.”

“That is because there is no lever,” she replied. “There is a button. There in the middle. Look.”

He saw the button, with its small graphic portrayal of a car bonnet upraised. He pressed it; nothing happened.

“It is dead too,” said Mma Mateleke, in a matter-of-fact voice. “The whole car has died.”

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni climbed out of the car. “I will get it open somehow,” he said. “There is always some way round these things.” He was not sure that there was.

Mr. Ntirang now spoke. “I think that it is time for me to get on with my journey,” he said. “You are in very good hands now, Mma. The best hands in Gaborone, people say.”