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to the cousin and the new husband, and the new husband replied that he
was grateful to Obed for looking after this woman so well.
    The new
husband owned two buses, which made him wealthy. One of these, the Molepolole
Special Express, had been pressed into service for the wedding, and was decked
for the occasion with bright blue cloth. In the other, they drove off after the
party, with the husband at the wheel and the new bride sitting in the seat
immediately behind him. There were cries of excitement, and ululation from the
women, and the bus drove off into happiness.
    They set up home ten miles
south of Gaborone, in an adobe-plastered house which the new husband’s
brother had built for him. It had a red roof and white walls, and a compound,
in the traditional style, with a walled yard to the front. At the back, there
was a small shack for a servant to live in, and a lean-to latrine made out of
galvanised tin. The cousin had a kitchen with a shining new set of pans and two
cookers. She had a large new South African paraffin-powered fridge, which
purred quietly all day, and kept everything icy cold within. Every evening, her
husband came home with the day’s takings from his buses, and she helped
him to count the money. She proved to be an excellent bookkeeper, and was soon
running that part of the business with conspicuous success.
    She made
her new husband happy in other ways. As a boy he had been bitten by a jackal,
and had scars across his face where a junior doctor at the Scottish Missionary
Hospital at Molepolole had ineptly sewn the wounds. No woman had told him that
he was handsome before, and he had never dreamed that any would, being more
used to the wince of sympathy. The cousin, though, said that he was the most
good-looking man she had ever met, and the most virile too. This was not mere
flattery—she was telling the truth, as she saw it, and his heart was
filled with the warmth that flows from the well-directed compliment.
    “I know you are missing me,” the cousin wrote to Precious.
“But I know that you want me to be happy. I am very happy now. I have a
very kind husband who has bought me wonderful clothes and makes me very happy
every day. One day, you will come and stay with us, and we can count the trees
again and sing hymns together, as we always used to. Now you must look after
your father, as you are old enough to do that, and he is a good man too. I want
you to be happy, and that is what I pray for, every night. God look after
Precious Ramotswe. God watch her tonight and forever. Amen.”
    Goats
    As a girl, Precious Ramotswe liked to draw, an
activity which the cousin had encouraged from an early age. She had been given
a sketching pad and a set of coloured pencils for her tenth birthday, and her
talent had soon become apparent. Obed Ramotswe was proud of her ability to fill
the virgin pages of her sketchbook with scenes of everyday Mochudi life. Here
was a sketch which showed the pond in front of the hospital—it was all
quite recognisable—and here was a picture of the hospital matron looking
at a donkey. And on this page was a picture of the shop, of the Small Upright
General Dealer, with things in front of it which could be sacks of mealies or
perhaps people sitting down—one could not tell—but they were
excellent sketches and he had already pinned several up on the walls of the
living room of their house, high up, near the ceiling, where the flies
sat.
    Her teachers knew of this ability, and told her that she might
one day be a great artist, with her pictures on the cover of the Botswana
Calendar. This encouraged her, and sketch followed sketch. Goats, cattle,
hills, pumpkins, houses; there was so much for the artist’s eye around
Mochudi that there was no danger that she would run out of subjects.
    The school got to hear of an art competition for children. The Museum in
Gaborone had asked every school in the country to submit a picture by one of
its pupils, on the theme “Life in