Mma Ramotswe had been thinking a great deal recently about how people might be fitted in. The world was a large place, and one might have thought that there was enough room for everybody. But it seemed that this was not so. There were many people who were unhappy, and wanted to move. Often they wished to come to the more fortunate countries-such as Botswana-in order to make more of their lives. That was understandable, and yet there were those who did not want them. This is our place, they said; you are not welcome.

It was so easy to think like that. People wanted to protect themselves from those they did not know. Others were different; they talked different languages and wore different clothes. Many people did not want them living close to them, just because of these differences. And yet, they were people, were they not? They thought the same way, and had the same hopes as anybody else did. They were our brothers and sisters, whichever way you looked at it, and you could not turn a brother or sister away.

Mochudi was busy. There was to be a wedding at the Dutch Reformed Church that afternoon, and the relatives of the bride were arriving from Serowe and Mahalapye. There was also something happening at one of the schools-a sports day, it seemed-and as she passed the field (or patch of dust, she noted ruefully) a teacher in a green floppy hat was shouting at a group of children in running shorts. Ahead of her on the road a couple of donkeys ambled aimlessly, flicking at the flies with their moth-eaten tails. It was, in short, a typical Mochudi Saturday.

Mma Ramotswe went to her cousin’s house and sat on a stool in the lelapa, the small, carefully swept yard which forms the immediate curtilage of the traditional Botswana house.