THE COUSIN’S WIFE had arranged with a local boatman to pick them up beside the river.
“This is very exciting,” said Mma Makutsi, as they stood beneath a large mopani tree, waiting for their makoro. “Do you know something, Mma Ramotswe? I have never been in a boat before.”
“Well, you will find out what it is like today,” said Mma Ramotswe. She paused. “Can you swim, Mma?”
Mma Makutsi shook her head. “I have never learned to swim. Up in Bobonong we didn’t really have any water. It’s hard to learn how to swim when there is no water.”
Mma Ramotswe considered this observation. It was, she thought, incontestably true. It was not surprising that there were not many champion swimmers in Botswana, as only one part of the country—the Delta—had much water.
“I cannot swim either,” she said. “Although I was once invited to go swimming in the pool at the Sun Hotel.”
“And did you, Mma Ramotswe?” Mma Makutsi tried not to smile at the picture that came into her mind of Mma Ramotswe entering the pool at the hotel and making the water rise to the point of overflowing. She had been taught about such things at school. She remembered the lesson: “If you place a (large) body in water, the level of the water rises as the body displaces a volume of water equal to the volume of the body.”
Mma Ramotswe herself smiled at the recollection. “I went in at the shallow end,” she said. “It was not very deep, and I found that I could stand. But then I made a very interesting discovery.”
“That you could swim?”
Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “No, I did not find that I could swim. I found, though, that I could float. I very slowly took the weight off my legs, and do you know, Mma, I floated. It was very pleasant. I did not have to move my arms—I just floated.”
Mma Makutsi clapped her hands. “That is very good, Mma! Well done! Perhaps it is something to do with being so traditionally built. A thin person would sink. You floated.”
“Possibly,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But it was good to discover that I could do a sport after all.”
Mma Makutsi was not certain that floating could be called a sport. Was there a Botswana floating team? She thought not. What would such a team do? Would they have to float gently from one point to another, with the winner being the one who arrived first? Surely not.
This conversation might have continued had they not then seen the boatman arriving. He came round a bend in the river, standing in his long, narrow canoe, using a pole to propel it forward. Seeing the two women under the tree, he raised a hand in greeting.
Mma Makutsi frowned. “Will we both fit in that, Mma? What if a hippo …”
Mma Ramotswe put a finger to her lips. “Let’s not talk about hippos, Mma. It is not a good idea to talk about hippos when you are just about to set off on a river journey.”
The boatman drew up at the bank in front of them, skilfully beaching the canoe at their feet. They noticed that he had attached a small outboard engine to the back of the makoro, and as they placed their overnight bags in the front of the canoe, he whipped the engine into life.
“Eagle Island is too far away for us to be traditional,” he said with a smile. “Now that you’re paying, I’ll turn the engine on.”
The two women settled themselves into their places in the canoe. As she did so, Mma Ramotswe noticed the clearance between the top edge of the boat and the surface of the water diminish alarmingly. And that was before Mma Makutsi had sat down. Hippos, she reminded herself, but did not give voice to the thought.
Mma Makutsi lowered herself. “The water is very close,” she said to the boatman. “Is that normal?”
The boatman replied in a matter-of-fact tone, “It is not normal, Mma. This canoe is very heavy now. That is why the water is almost coming over the side. But we will be perfectly safe, as long as you two ladies don’t move.”
Mma Makutsi froze. “And if we do move?” she whispered.
The boatman laughed. “If you move, we could go into the water. Big splash, Mma.”
“It isn’t funny,” said Mma Makutsi, raising her voice. “We are two ladies here on business. We cannot go into the water, where there are …”
“Hippos,” said the boatman, maintaining his matter-of-fact tone. “And many crocodiles too. And of course sometimes there are also elephants who like to swim in this river. And snakes too. There are snakes who live in the reeds by the side of the river. They like to swim too, Mma. Did you know that?”
“I do not want to hear about these things, Rra,” said Mma Makutsi.
Mma Ramotswe decided to say something to allay her assistant’s fear. There was no point in Mma Makutsi’s spending the trip in a state of terror. She would be cheerful. “Of course you aren’t frightened by any of these creatures, are you, Rra?”
The boatman stared at her. “Oh no, I am very frightened, Mma. I would not like to meet a hippo. They are very bad-tempered animals, and they can snap a man in two with those great teeth of theirs. Just like that. Ow! Snap, and he’s broken in two.”
Mma Ramotswe laughed nervously. “That is very unlikely to happen, Rra,” she said.
“Oh, no it isn’t, Mma. It happens all the time. It happened two weeks ago. I knew the man who was snapped in two by a hippo. He is—he was—the cousin of my wife’s sister’s husband. He was a very close relative, and now he is late.”
Mma Makutsi looked steadfastly ahead. They had now started their journey, and the makoro was heading upstream, throwing out a wake of crystal-clear water on either side of its narrow prow. The water glistened in the sun like a layer of liquid diamonds; beneath, some feet below, lay a clear sand-bank, mottled by the shadows of the wavelets. There was no sign of hippos just yet, but the river twisted this way and that, and there were many turns still to be negotiated. A herd of hippos might be behind any of these, waiting to demonstrate their well-known irascibility.
“I suppose it is better to be taken by a hippo than a crocodile,” the boatman went on. “If a hippo bites you in two, then you do not have much time to think. It is very quick … particularly if he gets your head in that big mouth of his. Then it must be like night coming suddenly. Very dark, I think, Mma.”
Mma Ramotswe tried to distract him. “There is a very interesting bird in the reeds over there, Rra. Did you see him?”
“That bird is very common, Mma,” said the boatman. “You will see many of those birds in the Delta. You must not worry about them. They are harmless.”
“I was not worried about the bird,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I was just pointing it out.”
“Of course,” went on the boatman, “if a crocodile gets you, then that is very different. That is not a good way to go. You’ve heard about the roll?”
Mma Ramotswe said nothing. Mma Makutsi was staring ahead; she too was mute.
The boatman was warming to his subject, raising his voice to make sure that both his passengers heard. “The crocodile gets you in his jaws. Then he takes you down under the water and he rolls over and over, spinning you round and round. This is to make you drown. Then he drags you away to his lair, which is usually under roots at the edge of a riverbank, rather like that place over there. See it? That is a good place for a crocodile to have his lair.”
Mma Makutsi did not dare so much as switch her gaze to the side; Mma Ramotswe glanced towards the bank, and then looked back ahead.
“Crocodiles don’t like fresh meat,” the boatman explained. “They much prefer to eat their prey when it’s a bit rotten. That is why they put you in their lair, you see …”
“Excuse me, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe suddenly. “This is all very interesting, but I do not think that it is a good idea to tell people these things when they are on the water. There are some stories that are better told on the land.”
“Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “That is true. We do not want you to speak, Rra. We are not in a mood for conversation.”
The boatman looked puzzled. Women, he thought. It was always the same: men were inter
ested in crocodiles and hippos and how they behaved; women were not. It was very difficult to understand. What did women think about? He had never worked out an answer to this, in spite of having had five wives. Perhaps I shall never understand them, he thought.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AT EAGLE ISLAND CAMP
THEY ARRIVED SAFELY. There were no hippos, and no crocodiles—or at least, none that they saw, and the two elephants they spotted, two young males standing under a canopy of large marula trees, were a safe distance away and completely uninterested in the passing boat.
Mma Ramotswe arranged for the boatman to return the following day. She and Mma Makutsi would spend the night in the camp, staying in the staff village with one of the women who worked in the kitchens. This woman was a friend of the cousin in Maun—again, a connection that could be deemed sufficiently close to allow for a request for hospitality. Of course, hospitality would be repaid at some time in the future: somebody from the camp would be in Gaborone, and would appear at the house in need of a bed for the night, or for several nights, and a meal, or several meals. Mma Ramotswe did not resent this, as it was the old Botswana morality in action: you helped people who had helped you, or who knew people whom you had helped.
The boatman disappeared down a winding branch of the river, whistling tunelessly. “That man is very tactless,” said Mma Makutsi. “He has no idea of when is the right time to talk about certain things. Imagine if we had been visitors, Mma. Imagine if we had been Swedish! We would have wanted to go straight back to Sweden, I think.”
“He was only trying to be helpful,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But you are right, Mma, he would not be the best tour guide in Botswana, I think. He would not be very reassuring for … for Swedish people.”
Mma Makutsi had more to say on the subject. “I was not frightened, Mma. I was not worried.”
“Of course not,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“But the Swedes …”
“Yes, of course. The Swedes. You are right to be concerned, Mma.” Mma Ramotswe, having straightened her dress, was looking towards the camp buildings a short distance away. A man in a khaki uniform was making his way towards them. He lifted an arm, waving, and greeted them politely as he came closer.
“You are Mma Ramotswe, are you, Mma?”
Mma Ramotswe inclined her head. “I am that lady,” she said. “And this is Mma Makutsi.”
“Assistant detective,” said Mma Makutsi quickly.
The man announced himself as the deputy manager. He had heard from the camp’s head office in Maun about Mma Ramotswe’s telephone call a couple of days earlier, explaining her mission. They were pleased, he said, that one of their guests had been so impressed with her visit as to leave a gift to one of the guides. “We are very happy about that, Mma, and we would like to help you. If you tell us who this American lady was, then we can find out which guide looked after her.”
They walked back towards the camp. The deputy manager would show them, he said, to the staff quarters, where they would be spending the night. Afterwards, they could come and have tea with the manager and the senior guide and talk about their mission. As they walked, Mma Ramotswe looked about her: she was still in her country, in Botswana, but it was a different Botswana from the one she knew. The vegetation here seemed very different—the trees were higher, the leaves greener. There were palm trees among the mopani and acacia; there were creepers and vines; everything was denser.
“This is a very beautiful place,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“That is why people come here,” said the deputy manager. “They come because they want to find a beautiful place. That is what people want.”
“There are many beautiful places,” said Mma Makutsi.
The deputy manager looked at her appreciatively, as if impressed by the wisdom of her observation. “I think that you are right,” he said.
Nothing more was said on the rest of the walk to the staff quarters. The woman with whom they were staying met them there, and took them to her small thatched house—a couple of rooms, one of which she had cleared for her guests. Mma Ramotswe looked at the floor, on which two reed sleeping mats had been laid. Beside each mat, a glass jam jar filled with water had been placed, each holding a small bunch of white and yellow flowers. The floor had been recently swept, and bore the marks of the brush, tiny scratch-like lines. A rough cupboard, unsteady on its legs she imagined, stood against the rear wall, ready for the guests’ possessions. The cupboard had been emptied of its contents and its door now stood ajar. This, she thought, is half a house, and it has been cleared for us.
“You should not have done this just for us,” she said to the woman, who had introduced herself as Mma Sepoi.
Mma Sepoi smiled, and dropped a knee in a small curtsy. “You are my guests, Mma. I want you to be comfortable.”
They settled in, Mma Sepoi telling them about her life while they placed in the rickety cupboard the few possessions they had brought with them. It was an ability that Mme Ramotswe always admired—that of encapsulating a whole life, and often the life of an entire family, in a few sentences. So many people, she had discovered, could do it, and effortlessly too; in her own case, she needed time. Where would one start? With Obed Ramotswe meeting her mother, bashful and hesitant about marriage, when he came back for a break from his work in the mines? With her return to Mochudi and that terrible stormy night when her mother, in circumstances that were yet to be fully explained, wandered onto the railway line that ran from Bulawayo down to Mafikeng? With those early days at the school high above Mochudi, where one might hear drifting from down below the sound of cattle bells?
“I have worked here for four years,” said Mma Sepoi. “I am very happy. Some people, you know, that go into one job and then another, they say, This job does not suit me; it has this, that, or the next thing wrong with it. You know people like that, Mma Ramotswe? There are many of them. Not me. I came here after I had worked as a cleaning lady in Maun. Before that I had a job at Jack’s Camp, with the old man, not the son, but the father before him. They are very good people. They know this country better than most people, Mma. And before that I was in Nata, from the time when I was a girl. My father was a policeman there. He was very good at catching stock thieves. If a cattle thief saw him coming, just walking along the road, he would run. Like that. Off. And my father would run after him and catch him because he had been in the police running team. He was a No. 1 police runner. And his father, my grandfather, was from Francistown, and his cattle were all drowned in a big flood on the Shashi River. That happened a long time ago, Mma.”
“A lot has happened in your life,” said Mma Makutsi. “You have had a very eventful life.”
Mma Sepoi acknowledged the compliment. “I have had many things that have happened to me. But I am not complaining. I say that everything that happens has a lesson in it. You look at it and you say, ‘That happened because of this thing.’ And then when it happens next, you know why it happened in the first place.” She paused to take a breath. “That is the way I look at things, Mma.”
Mma Makutsi took off her glasses and polished them. “Are there many animals here, Mma?” she asked. The question was casually posed, but Mma Ramotswe detected an edge to it.
“Oh, there are many,” said Mma Sepoi. She pointed out of the door behind her. “Keep this door closed at night, Mma.”
Mma Makutsi redoubled her polishing efforts. “I always keep my door closed at night,” she said nervously. “It is safer that way.”
“Especially here,” said Mma Sepoi. “I got up the other night because I heard something sniffing at my door. I have a saucepan by my bed and I bang it against the wall to make a noise. Lions don’t like saucepans, Mma.”
Mma Makutsi swallowed. “I have heard that.”
“I’ll leave one by your bed, Mma. So if you need it, you can make a noise.” Mma Sepoi paused. “Of course it may not have been a lion,” she said.
Mma Makutsi looked relieved. A warthog would not frig
hten anybody; nor an anteater. “Of course. It may have been something else.”
“A leopard, perhaps,” said Mma Sepoi. “They are very dangerous too, you know.”
Later, on their way over to the office in the main camp, Mma Ramotswe noticed that her assistant was walking very close to her, almost bumping into her as they made their way along the narrow path. She tried not to smile; it had never occurred to her that Mma Makutsi would be nervous about being in the Delta. Had Mma Makutsi had a bad experience up in Bobonong, when she was a girl? Sometimes people could be afraid of snakes, for instance, if they had encountered a snake as a child. She had known somebody who had a tendency to faint at the very mention of snakes; and another, she now remembered, who panicked at the sight of a spider. Mma Ramotswe, of course, had a healthy respect for wild animals, but understood that they were generally quite harmless unless one intruded upon their territory, which she had no intention of doing. Mind you, she told herself, the river, on which she and Mma Makutsi had travelled earlier that day, was the territory of the hippopotamus, and the crocodile, and …
They arrived at the camp office. The manager appeared—a tall man, a South African, who stooped to shake hands with them. “I have heard why you have come here, Mma Ramotswe,” he said. “Our chief guide is here. He is called Mighty, and he keeps the roster of who looks after each guest. He will tell you who this fortunate man is.”
The Double Comfort Safari Club Page 16