How to Raise an Elephant

by Alexander McCall Smith

  And there was Prince Charles, who she knew loved Botswana. When he came again to visit the country, she would try to invite him for tea. He would be too busy to come, of course, and there were people around him who would fend off invitations, but she knew they would have a great deal to talk about: about the rains and the crops; about looking after the world; about remembering that when all was said and done, we lived on the land and had to give the land the love that it needed if it was to continue to provide for us.

  “It would be good to have two birthdays,” said Mma Potokwane. “But I think we have to be content with one.”

  The kettle having boiled, she made the tea. Then, once that had been poured, a jug of milk was passed around. Mma Makutsi took no more than a dash of milk in hers, while Mma Ramotswe, who liked her tea milky—even when she was drinking her favourite red bush tea—poured a generous volume of milk into her cup.

  And then there was sugar. Mma Makutsi hesitated, as if conscious of an invisible censor—her shoes, perhaps, who had once ticked her off for eating three fat cakes in a row—but then helped herself to a half-spoon, passing the sugar bowl on to Mma Ramotswe. She did not hold back from helping herself to one and a half spoons—but filled so generously as to be the equivalent of three more modest spoonfuls. Then the bowl was passed to Mma Potokwane, who took three and a half.

  The cake was served by Mma Potokwane, who told her guests that there were more cherries than usual in the mixture. Cherries had been on promotion at the supermarket, she explained, and she had stocked up. “Children like cherries, you see, and I give them as a reward if a child does something especially good.”

  Mma Ramotswe smiled as she imagined a well-behaved child having a sticky and glistening cherry popped into its mouth by Mma Potokwane. “Perhaps the government could do that too,” she mused. “Not for children, but for adults. There could be special ceremonies at which people who have done good things would line up to get a cherry from one of the government ministers.”

  Mma Makutsi chuckled. “That’s a very good idea, Mma. That nurse—Sister Banjule—you remember her? She would be at the top of the list.”

  Mma Ramotswe nodded. Sister Banjule, who ran the Anglican Hospice, would be a very good candidate for this reward. She had looked after so many people at the end of their days, and done so with kindness—the greatest compliment anybody could pay a nurse or a doctor. Kindness. It was not a complicated thing, kindness—we all knew how to be kind, and we all recognised it when we came across it. Sister Banjule had looked after Mma Makutsi’s late brother, Richard, when he had died. His life had not been of much importance or significance to others—he was a very ordinary man, who had not really done very much—but she had made him feel cherished in those final few days, and Mma Makutsi had never forgotten that.

  “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe. “She would be at the top of the list—right up at the top of the list, Mma Makutsi.” She looked at Mma Potokwane. She was another person who should be given a cherry by the government, but Mma Ramotswe would not mention that now, as Mma Potokwane was modest and expected no reward.

  They bit into their cake. The taste of cherries, liberally sprinkled through the dried fruit that made up much of the cake’s bulk, came through strongly. Mma Makutsi closed her eyes in a transport of delight. “This is very fine cake, Mma,” she said to Mma Potokwane.

  “I am in complete agreement with Mma Makutsi,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “I am very happy,” said Mma Potokwane, taking a sip of her tea. “It would be a different matter if I had guests who did not like cherries.”

  The conversation moved on. “There is something we need to tell you about,” said Mma Ramotswe. “It is a very strange thing. You will not have heard of something like this, I think.”

  Mma Potokwane grinned. “You cannot shock me, Mma Ramotswe—if that is what you are worried about. Remember I am a matron—with hospital training—and if you are a matron, you have usually seen everything.” She paused to shake her head, as if remembering some of the more shocking things she had seen in her career. “No, I am never surprised to hear what people get up to—especially men.”

  Mma Makutsi agreed with that. “Especially men,” she said.

  “And sometimes ladies, surely,” said Mma Ramotswe. “We must not be too hard on men.”

  “That’s true,” said Mma Potokwane. “Ladies are not always as innocent as they appear. For instance…”

  She did not need to finish. All three of them were thinking of the same person, and there was no need to spell out the name. Violet Sephotho.

  “But let’s not worry too much about all that,” said Mma Potokwane eventually. “You were about to tell me, Mma Ramotswe, of some shocking thing. Well, I am listening now.”

  “It has nothing to do with Violet,” Mma Makutsi said. “I could tell you some shocking things about her, Mma Potokwane, but…”

  Mma Ramotswe shared her reservation. “We could do that some other day, perhaps. We would not want to burden Mma Potokwane unduly.”

  Mma Potokwane protested that she was perfectly happy to be burdened with disclosures about Violet Sephotho. She was by no means a gossip, but she enjoyed a scandalous story as much as the next person, and when you lived out at Tlokweng, you sometimes felt that you were missing out on some of the juicier goings-on in Gaborone itself. Not that Gaborone was a hotbed of such things, but a large town inevitably had a spicier life than a small town, and those who lived in small towns, or in the country, might be forgiven for taking an interest in what their urban cousins were getting up to.

  “Well,” said Mma Makutsi, “as I was telling Mma Ramotswe only recently, when she was at the Botswana Secretarial College—at the same time that I was there, Mma—”

  “And where you got ninety-seven per cent, if I’m not mistaken,” interjected Mma Potokwane.

  Mma Makutsi inclined her head. “Yes, that was indeed the case, Mma, but what I was going to mention was the fact that Violet had three—”

  Mma Ramotswe interrupted her. “I really think we should talk about that some other time. I really do.”

  “—boyfriends,” Mma Makutsi finished.

  “Three boyfriends!” exclaimed Mma Potokwane.

  “A morning boyfriend, an—”

  Mma Ramotswe cleared her throat. “The thing that we came to tell you about, Mma Potokwane, concerns Charlie.”

  Mma Potokwane seemed disappointed to be leaving the subject of multiple boyfriends, but now gave Mma Ramotswe her full attention. “Ah, Charlie,” she said with a sigh. “He is always getting himself into difficulties. So, what’s it now, Mma Ramotswe? More girl trouble?”

  “He is not having girl trouble at present,” interjected Mma Makutsi. “That is a thing of the past, now. He went off and got married. He did it very quietly.”

  Mma Potokwane approved. “That will be very good,” she said. “It is always the best thing for a young man like Charlie. If a young man finds a nice girl, then everything works out well. I have seen that time and time again with the boys here. When they grow up and make their own lives, I watch the ones who had a bad start and who may have been a bit difficult. I watch them, and see what happens. If they come back with a nice girl to introduce to me, then I know straightaway that everything will be fine. That will go for Charlie too, I think.”

  “I hope so,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But at the moment there is a more pressing matter. Charlie has been looking after an animal that I’m afraid is going to cause problems for him.”

  Mma Potokwane shook her head. “Don’t tell me, Mma Ramotswe. A dog. I’ve seen young people do that. They get a puppy and they forget that having a puppy is like having a baby. It’s almost as much work. And then the puppy gets bigger and bigger and some of them are badly behaved and start biting people, and then there is all sorts of fuss. And the poor dog gets kicked out and ends up wandering around until it
’s run over or a leopard eats it or something like that.”

  “Leopards like to eat dogs,” said Mma Makutsi. “And so do crocodiles. Phuti knew a man who had a boy hunting dog called Simba. He was a very strong dog, that one, who had jaws like a hyena. Have you seen hyena jaws, Mma Potokwane? They are very big and powerful. You do not want them to bite you if you can avoid it.”

  Mma Ramotswe began to steer the conversation back to Charlie, but Mma Makutsi was determined to continue her story. “This dog,” she went on, “went with its owner down to the Limpopo one day. He was looking for guinea fowl, I think, because they have them in the bush out there. Anyway, he decided to walk down to the edge of the river to see what was going on down there, and there were some flat rocks that stretched out into the water. There was quite a lot of water, as there had been good rains and the Limpopo was in flood.”

  Mma Potokwane winced. “You have to be careful, you know. That river can be dangerous.”

  “Yes,” said Mma Makutsi. “It can. But this man—this friend of Phuti’s—was not careful. He walked out onto those flat rocks and his dog followed him—this horrible big dog called Simba. And since he was thirsty, the dog put his head down to drink some water from the river, and that was when it happened. Right in front of that man, a crocodile suddenly came up out of the water, grabbed the dog by the nose, and pulled him into the river. There was a lot of splashing, and the man threw some rocks into the water where the crocodile had disappeared with the dog, but there’s not much you can do, Mma Potokwane, if a crocodile has you by the nose. They do the death roll, you see. Phuti told me about it. The crocodile spins his prey round and round underwater and he drowns him. That is what happens, Mma.”

  There was a short silence as they contemplated the fate of the dog. Then Mma Ramotswe said, “It’s not a dog in Charlie’s case, Mma Potokwane. It’s an elephant. Charlie has got hold of a baby elephant.”

  Mma Potokwane’s eyes widened, and then she let out a whoop of astonishment. “An elephant, Mma? A baby elephant? Oh, that is very funny.” Tears of mirth began to show in her eyes; she wiped them away. “That is the funniest thing I have heard for many years. An elephant!”

  Mma Ramotswe was taken aback by her friend’s reaction. The fact that Charlie had ended up with an elephant was, in a sense, amusing—but not that amusing. She tried, as gently as she could, to impress on Mma Potokwane the gravity of the situation—a difficult task in any circumstances, as Mma Potokwane’s nature was one of breezy confidence. “It’s tethered to a post on wasteland behind his uncle’s place,” she said. “He’s tied it to a metal post in the ground. That’s all. There are no fences, Mma. No stockade.”

  Mma Potokwane shook her head in continued disbelief. “An elephant. Would you believe it, Mma Ramotswe? Mma Makutsi, would you believe it? Had you said, ‘Charlie has a puppy,’ I wouldn’t have been all that surprised. But an elephant, ladies—an elephant!”

  “You can’t keep an elephant like that,” Mma Ramotswe continued.

  Mma Potokwane laughed again. “You can’t keep an elephant at all,” she said. “No, an elephant is not a chicken or a duck. It is not a goat.”

  Mma Makutsi rolled her eyes. “It is definitely not, Mma. But I don’t think anybody thought it was. Nobody has been saying, ‘An elephant is just like a goat.’ Nobody, Mma.”

  Mma Potokwane smiled at this contribution, before continuing, “Oh, Mma Ramotswe, I thought I’d heard everything until I heard this. An elephant!”

  “It’s dangerous,” said Mma Ramotswe simply. “Very dangerous.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that,” agreed Mma Potokwane. “Did you read in the newspaper about that poor person up north? That late person?”

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head. The Botswana Daily News was full of unfortunate things that befell people. And these things were inevitable, given the nature of the world and the things that could go wrong. But you couldn’t let all that deter you, she thought. You soldiered on; you carried on doing what you thought was the right thing to do; you soldiered on.

  “Well,” continued Mma Potokwane, “there was a report from up your way, Mma Makutsi—not Bobonong itself, but a bit further west, past the Makgadikgadi Pans. Up there in the middle of nowhere.” She paused. A discouraging look from Mma Makutsi warned her that she was on tricky ground. And so she added, quickly, “I’m not saying that Bobonong is in the middle of nowhere, Mma Makutsi. I’m not saying that. Bobonong is an important place because…”

  She had gone too far. Had she stopped immediately after admitting the importance of Bobonong, there would have been no difficulty, but she had unwisely started to explain why this should be so, and she realised she had not the slightest idea what happened in Bobonong.

  Mma Makutsi smiled. “You’re right, Mma. There is a lot going on in Bobonong. What were you thinking of in particular, Mma?”

  “Oh, it’s difficult to say,” said Mma Potokwane. “These places, you know what they’re like. There’s always something.” She paused. “But let’s not worry about Bobonong. I wanted to tell you about what happened in this other place—the one I was talking about. You see, an elephant walked into a village and knocked down this poor man’s hut. He was sheltering inside it because he had heard the elephant, but its walls were made of straw and mud and the elephant just had to lean on them to knock it down. The poor man had no chance.”

  “That’s very sad, Mma,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Imagine what it is like to have your house knocked over by an elephant.”

  Mma Makutsi had views on that. “It’s because people are building their places on elephants’ land,” she said. “If you leave elephants alone, they’ll leave you alone. They have their own places, and all you have to do is keep away from those and you’ll be all right.”

  “But there isn’t enough land,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? There are too many people and many of them want to plant crops in places where the elephants live. So the elephants think: These people are on our land, and they rush round and knock things over and frighten everybody because they’re so big and so powerful. And then somebody takes a shot at an elephant and all the elephants feel very strongly about that and begin to eat vegetables from people’s gardens and frighten everybody. And then you have a big incident.”

  Having delivered her views on the subject, Mma Ramotswe sighed. Mma Potokwane, the attentive hostess, interpreted this as a coded request for a further slice of fruit cake. Reaching for the cake tin, she cut a large slice and tipped it onto Mma Ramotswe’s plate. Then she did the same for Mma Makutsi.

  “Mma Potokwane,” said Mma Ramotswe. “You will be responsible for my needing a new wardrobe—all my dresses…”

  “That is just shrinkage,” said Mma Potokwane. “People blame cake for that sort of thing, but they forget that dresses have a natural tendency to shrink with age.”

  Mma Makutsi laughed. “Phuti’s trousers have been shrinking for a long time. He is always complaining about that.”

  Mma Ramotswe took a bite of her fruit cake and then washed it down with a swig of tea. “This elephant,” she said, “this elephant of Charlie’s—you know what I am worried about, Mma Potokwane? I am worried about the children.”

  Mma Potokwane frowned. “The children, Mma? What children?”

  Mma Ramotswe looked out of the window. It was a cunning tactic, and it was working—just as Clovis Andersen said it would. He said somewhere in The Principles of Private Detection that the way to get people to see things from your point of view was to share their anxieties. Find out what they’re worried about, he wrote, and then talk about that. The one thing that could be guaranteed to trigger concern on Mma Potokwane’s part was the welfare of children.

  “Oh, there are all sorts of children,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Old Naledi is full of children, and they like to play on that wasteland. When word gets out among the children that
there is a baby elephant there, they will be onto it like…like…” She struggled to find the right metaphor, and was about to make some reference to bees and honey when Mma Makutsi interjected: “Like flies on cattle,” she said.

  “Yes, like that,” said Mma Ramotswe. “And what worries me is the thought that these children will be hurt. Even a baby elephant weighs rather a lot, Mma Potokwane. A baby elephant can crush a child very easily—even without meaning to.”

  Mma Potokwane’s frown deepened. “That is very worrying, Mma,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  “You need to go to the police,” said Mma Potokwane. “Or the Wildlife Department.”

  Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “I wish it were that simple, Mma Potokwane. Fanwell suggested that to Charlie. He said, ‘Why don’t you go to the Wildlife Department, Charlie, and get them to take this elephant from you?’ ”

  “And?” asked Mma Potokwane.

  “Charlie told Fanwell that his friend was unwilling to do that for some reason. Perhaps he thinks he’ll get into trouble for moving an elephant without their permission.”

  “And the police?” asked Mma Potokwane.

  “Charlie’s friend said the police would just dump it somewhere. They are too busy with all the work they have to do. They can’t look after elephants.”

  Mma Potokwane poured more tea. “This is not very good,” she said. “We can’t let it hurt the children in Old Naledi.” She paused. “Is there something else, Mma Makutsi? Is there something you haven’t mentioned?”

  Mma Makutsi hesitated. “I think they may be planning to slaughter it and sell the meat. Not Charlie, but his friend. He knows a butcher, apparently.”

  Mma Potokwane put down the teapot rapidly. “That is very bad news indeed, Mma.” She sank her head in her hands. “We don’t want the poor creature to die. All the time these poor elephants have been dying, dying. They are very intelligent beasts, Mma.”

  What she said was heartfelt, and it brought about a short silence. Mma Potokwane had spent her life looking after people who could not look after themselves—her orphans—and she had done so with little fuss and certainly with no thought of personal reward. And it was that same sympathy that had sustained her efforts in that direction that was now aroused for this small elephant. She was practical, of course—she could not have achieved what she had achieved without knowing how the world worked—and she knew that difficult issues arose when elephants came into contact with human society, but that did not stop the prompting of her heart.