Mr J.L.B. Matekoni thought very carefully. After the initial bombshell, when Mma Potokwane had revealed what she had in mind, he had remained silent for a moment. At first, he thought that he had misheard her, and that she had said that she wanted him tofix a parachute, just as she was always asking him to fix some piece of equipment. But of course she had not asked him that, as there would have been plenty of people around the orphan farm who would be much better placed to fix a parachute than he. Fixing a parachute was a sewing job, he assumed, and most of the housemothers were adept at that; they were always sewing the orphans’ clothes, repairing rents in the seats of boys’ trousers or undoing the hems of skirts that were now a little bit too short. These ladies could easily have stitched up a torn parachute, even if the parachute would end up with a patch made out of a boy’s trousers. No, that was not what Mma Potokwane could have had in mind.

Her next remark made this clear. “It’s a very good way of raising money,” she had said. “The hardship project did it last year. That man from the radio-the well-known one with the funny voice-he agreed to jump. And then that girl who almost became Miss Botswana said she would jump too. They raised a lot of money. A lot.”

“But I cannot jump,” Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had protested. “I have never even been in an aeroplane. I would not like to jump from one.”

It was as if Mma Potokwane had not heard him. “It is a very easy thing to do. I have spoken to somebody in the Flying Club and they say that they can teach you how to do it. They have a book, too, which shows you how to put your feet when you land. It is very simple. Even I could do it.”