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.