But if she were to write a book, then the title would undoubtedly beHow 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.