I invented Precious Ramotswe, she of the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, on a
whim, when I really intended to write about something else.
For some years I had thought of writing about a woman who lived in Botswana,
but I suspect that what I really wanted to do was to write about her
country. Authors often do that. They may appear to be talking about a
person, but they are really talking about a place.
Botswana has never been an obvious place. I suspect that few people in the UK
have a clear idea of exactly where it is, although many are aware of the
Kalahari, the vast semi-desert that occupies the centre of the country.
Understandable, really.
Under its current name, it has been around for just over 40 years. Prior to
independence in 1966, it was the Bechuanaland Protectorate, treated by the
British with what could most generously be described as benign neglect.
Not that there was no interference. When Seretse Khama, the Paramount Chief of
the Bamangwato, made it clear that he wished to marry a British woman he had
met in London, he was exiled, in a shameful example of colonial shabbiness.
That great love story, and its happy outcome, stands, Okavango ngo Deltalta in
a sense, for the whole modern history of the country. Seretse and Ruth
eventually prevailed D and he became the first president of the new state.
Mma Ramotswe admires him greatly, and has a plate with his image on it. She
also, incidentally, D admires the Queen and Nelson Mandela.
From the first, Khama made it clear that corruption would not be stood for,
which is something exceptional in sub-Saharan Africa.
When one enters through Seretse Khama airport, in Gaborone, one of the first
things one sees is a prominent notice that says: “We do not tolerate
corruption in Botswana.” The second surprise comes quickly after that, when
one’s passport is taken by a noticeably polite immigration official. It is
typical of the country that the small transactions of life are conducted
with a courtesy that is rare elsewhere.
Traditionally, most Batswana have had three homes. There is the village where
they have their main house; the land where they plant their crops; and
finally the cattle post, usually a fair distance away, where the cattle are
looked after by boys and old men. The Batswana would move between these
three places, depending on the time of year and, to an extent, inclination.
These patterns have changed with urbanisation, but people in the towns still
have a strong sense of a link with the land and will hold onto their cattle
and cattle posts.
PRECIOUS RAMOTSWE was born in Mochudi, a traditional village just under an
hour’s drive from Gaborone. When I first visited it, back in the early
1980s, I went there to stay with an old friend who ran what was then a
mission hospital. Things have changed: the hospital has been taken over by
the government and Mochudi itself has spread out across the plain. But it is
still recognisably the same place, with its kgotla, the traditional
meeting place, providing the centre around which rambling traditional
homesteads cluster.
Just behind the kgotla is a hill, a tumble of rounded rocks on top of
which sits the old schoolhouse in which Precious went to school. This is now
a local museum, with the artefacts of local life and the documents of the
tribe laid out in simple display. Looking at these, it is impossible not to
be moved by the integrity of the culture they represent – a culture that
came face to face with a world that had very different priorities.
From the front of the museum, one looks down on the country to the south, a
great flat plain of green-brown scrub bush. Here and there, rising like
little islands from the surface of a great inland sea, are small conical
hills – inselbergs, as they are known. A small river meanders across the
plain; the sound of cattle bells drifts up. This slow-moving, rural Botswana
provides one with a glimpse of traditional Africa that is disappearing so
quickly elsewhere. This is a society that is still unhurried.
Although visitors now spend time in Gaborone and Mochudi, the real attractions
are up in the north, where the Okavango delta and its surrounding country
make up what is probably one of the last unspoilt wildernesses in Africa.
Tucked away here, in places accessible only by light plane, are the camps of
upmarket companies that daily recreate the atmosphere of the grand safaris
of the past. Botswana has behaved very responsibly in controlling tourism.
The camps are discreet affairs, carefully planned to fit in with their
surroundings, and the guides are all conservation-minded. As a result, the
pristine beauty of this extraordinary part of Africa has been preserved. It
is very different from the overvisited game parks of East Africa and South
Africa itself. In South Africa, many of the smaller parks are new creations,
with imported animals. Of course, Mma Ramotswe would be tolerant of that,
but she would raise an eyebrow, I suspect, at the faux nature of the African
experience on offer elsewhere.
IN THE BOOKS, Mma Ramotswe has yet to venture into the Okavango delta,
although Anthony Minghella’s film takes her there. This is a bit of dramatic
licence, and not too far from the fictional truth. Mma Ramotswe certainly
goes into the Kalahari, which lies to the south of the Okavango. It is into
the Kalahari that the waters of the Okavango drain. Nature has made a big
mistake; the rivers do not run to Angola through the sea, but head inland
until they reach the Kalahari sands. As a result, although the Kalahari
itself is dry and inhospitable, there is underground water, a covering of
vegetation and animal life.
It is possible to venture into the Central Kalahari even if one has
comparatively little time to spend in Botswana. Four hours from Gaborone in
a 4WD vehicle will take you through increasingly sandy veld into this place
of distant horizons and high, empty skies.
Sitting round a campfire at night in the Kalahari, with the nearest other
humans many miles away, one begins to see how, at the heart of this
country’s soul, there is a quality of precious stillness. Look up and see
above you a sky so filled with stars that it seems almost white:
constellation after dipping constellation, and there, suspended above the
horizon, is the Southern Cross. That way is the Cape, and beyond it the cold
southern ocean that bounds the extremities of this Africa. There is such
beauty here, in this utter isolation, in this place of dry distances, of
sudden, haunting birdsong, that it breaks the heart; each time one
experiences it, it breaks the heart.
Mma Ramotswe is proud of it all, of course, and in the books she often gives
voice to that pride. And how could she be anything but proud of what her
country has done, which is create the unrivalled gem of Africa? But there is
more to her pride than that. At several points in the books, she says that
Africa has values of which it has no call to be ashamed – values of
generosity and sharing, which are still there, in spite of all the disasters
of Africa’s 20th century.
“I found it all,” one American visitor to Botswana once said to me. “I found
it all. Everything that Mma Ramotswe talked about. It was all there.”
The film of the first book in The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series,
starring Jill Scott, is on BBC1 tonight at 9pm. The ninth book, The Miracle
at Speedy Motors (Little, Brown £14.99), has just been published. To buy it
for the reduced price of £13.49, including free p&p in the UK, call
The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585
Travel brief
Botswana is best tackled using a specialist tour operator such as Africa
Travel Centre (0845 450 5705, www.africatravel.co.uk),
which can tailor-make trips throughout the country. A 10-night itinerary
featuring fascinating locations from the film, with two nights in Gaborone,
two in the Moremi Reserve at Camp Okuti, two in the Okavango delta at
Kanana, and two in the Kalahari at Edo’s Camp (with two nights on overnight
flights), starts at £3,195pp, including flights from Heathrow to Gaborone
with British Airways (via Johannesburg), domestic flights, transfers and
safari activities. There is also a day tour taking in the rambling house
used as Mma Ramotswe’s home on Zebra Drive, in Gaborone, her ancestral home
in Mochudi (and the museum there, which was formerly a school), the
President Hotel, JLB Matekoni’s house and Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors.
Tim Best Travel (020 7591 0300, www.timbesttravel.com)
has a 10-night trip, visiting local villages and cattle posts, as well as
two spectacular wildlife areas, the Makgadikgadi Pan and the Okavango delta,
from £3,170pp, including flights from Heathrow to Gaborone with BA (via
Jo’burg), safaris and all transfers. Other recommended operators include
Audley Travel (01993 838500, www.audleytravel.com),
Abercrombie & Kent (0845 618 2212, www.abercrombiekent.co.uk),
Okavango Tours (020 8343 3283, www.okavango.com),
Aardvark Safaris (01980 849160, www.aardvarksafaris.com)
and Expert Africa (020 8232 9777, www.expertafrica.com).
