Read The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine for Free Online Page B

as man-eaters, Rra. Have you heard that expression?”
    Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni nodded. “I have heard it.”
    “I think that people might call her that,” she said. “They might call her ‘The Great Man-Eater of the Kalahari.’ ”
    He glanced at his wife. She was a kind woman—none kinder in Botswana—and it was unusual for her to make an uncharitable remark. And even as he thought this, Mma Ramotswe felt a sudden pang of guilt. Nicknames were popular, but they were often cruel. Did Violet Sephotho deserve such a cutting nickname? The answer, she realised, was probably
yes.
But no, that was no excuse. “Perhaps we should not call her that,” she said, sounding a bit disappointed.
    “Perhaps not,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, adding, “Even if it does suit her rather well, Mma.”
    He looked at his watch. “It is time for me to go to work,” he said. “I am not on holiday.”
    “I will make you some lunch,” offered Mma Ramotswe. “That will give me something to do.”
    “I shall be back at lunch time, then.” He paused. “Don’t look for things to do, Mma Ramotswe. Remember that this is a holiday and you must not look for things to do on a holiday.”
    She promised him she would not. “I am already beginning to unwind,” she said. “I am like a big spring that is unwinding slowly.”
    “That is good,” he said. “That is exactly how it should be.”
    —
    BUT THAT WAS NOT HOW IT WAS —at least not on that first day of the holiday, and indeed not on the second or third day either. Shortly after Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had driven off to work in his battered green truck, Mma Ramotswe found her way into the kitchen. She looked about her, at the cutting boards and the cupboards, at the stove with the discoloured heating plates, at the stacks of crockery on the shelves. Kitchens were quick to look shabby, and although Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had painted theirs barely eighteen months ago, it was already looking slightly down at heel. Part of the problem, of course, was the absence of proper ventilation. Modern kitchens—and hers could not really be described as such—had extractor fans that took all the smoke and smells out. Mma Makutsi’s kitchen in her new house was like that: she had two large metal hoods coming down from the ceiling in just the right place to catch the steam laden with fats that would otherwise be deposited on the walls and ceiling, the fingerprint of countless meals. That steam was ushered out of Mma Makutsi’s kitchen, but in Mma Ramotswe’s it swirled about until it settled in a thin layer over everything. If you fried a lot of foods—as Mma Ramotswe had to admit to doing—then you soon noticed the effect.
    “Open a window,” suggested Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “That’s what I do in the garage when I run an engine. I open a window to let out all the carbon monoxide.”
    She admitted that this would help, but it was not a complete solution. The trouble with opening a window in Botswana was that even if you let certain things out, you also let other things in—and sometimes those things you let in were things it would be decidedly better to keep out. There were mosquitoes, for example, that loved open windows, even if the window was fitted with a metal mesh screen precisely to keep them out. Such screens were an inconvenience to mosquitoes, but nothing more than that; inevitably there were holes at the corners or there were places where the tiny wires that made up the screen had buckled or moved, creating a good place for mosquitoes to fly through.
    Then there were those large black insects with wings. You never learned what these insects were; they made a lot of noise with the beating of their wings, and they had sharp points protruding from their heads, but they did not appear to belong to any known category of insect. Some people said that they were harmless and that it was bad luck to step on them and crush them; others said that if you let them crawl around your house they would