The Kalahari Typing School for Men

This book is generally about the people and culture of Botswana, a country termed a shining beacon in Africa, a quiet traditionally cattle-rearing people with high moral standards that are somewhat being eroded by modernity and city life. I’ve learnt the most from it about Botswana: The city of Gaborone that used to be called Chief Gaborone’s Place, some other towns and places like Mochudi, Francistown, Lobatse; the widely respected first president that instilled in people the abhorrence of corrupt practices in government, the low population of about two million people many living in rural areas rearing cattle, the manner of referring to males as Rra and females as Mma, the dry weather that made water precious to the people and the land, traditional norms of greeting and courtesy to people, the love for football, and so on.

That is the skeletal framework for the story. To dress it up is a cast made up of two ladies running the country’s first detective agency (The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) that have teamed up with a man and his two apprentices running a mechanic workshop (Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors). The senior detective and owner of the agency, Mma Precious Ramotswe, is engaged to the owner of the workshop, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and they have agreed to foster two orphan children. The story brings out a number of incidents in the lives of every one of these people, beginning with Ramotswe’s worries about the fact that her assistant, Mma Makutsi, is a single lady with no suitor.

It is Makutsi that thinks up the idea of setting up a school to teach men typing in secret to save the men from the possible embarrassment of being seen to be learning a woman’s job. In the process one of her students falls in love with her, lying to her that his wife left him with their kids for another man. Though it turns out the wife didn’t actually leave him, he just felt unloved at home. When the wife goes to Ramotswe to get her to find out what the man has been up to, she now has the problem of breaking up the affair without hurting her employee. And this sort of works out quite okay.

Then there is the story of Mr Molefelo, a client with a past he now wants to make amends for, following a near-brush with death, in order to free his conscience. In his younger days he’d gotten his sweetheart pregnant, had secretly robbed the family he was living with to get money for the abortion, and had dumped the girl. Now over twenty years later and after becoming a successful businessman, he wants to find the family and the girl and apologize and give them money if necessary. This also works out well, thanks to the skillful handling by Mma Ramotswe. She finds the family (less the man who’d died) and arranges for a reconciliatory meeting between the widow and Molefelo. She also finds the dumped girl now a happily married woman with kids, and convinces Molefelo to help pay for the education of the woman’s daughter that now wants to be a nurse, since the woman herself could not go on to become a nurse because of the abortion.

The language is rather simple and formal, and it appears the way the cultural habits are explained, the audience is people outside Botswana. One gets the feeling that Africans or at least those from Botswana’s cherished past, were honest, courteous and kind people that loved cattle and the land.

August 16, 2015. Review initially written in 2007. Novel first published in 2002. Picture source: Goodreads.com.