There were two other letters. One was from a boy of fourteen who had been moved to write to Aunty Emang about being picked upon by his teacher. “I am a hard-working boy,” he wrote. “I do all my schoolwork very carefully and neatly. I never shout in the class or push people about (like most other boys). When my teacher talks, I always pay attention and smile at him. I do not trouble the girls (like most other boys). I am a very good boy in every sense. Yet my teacher always blames me for anything that goes wrong and gives me low marks in my work. I am very unhappy. The more I try to please this teacher, the more he dislikes me. What am I doing wrong?”

Everything, thought Mma Ramotswe. That’s what you are doing wrong: everything. But how could one explain to a fourteen-year-old boy that one should not try too hard; which was what he was doing and which irritated his teacher. It was better, she thought, to be a little bit bad in this life, and not too perfect. If you were too perfect, then you invited exactly this sort of reaction, even if teachers should be above that sort of thing. But what, she wondered, would Aunty Emang say?

“Dear Boy,” wrote Aunty Emang. “Teachers do not like boys like you. You should not say you are not like other boys, or people will think that you are like a girl.” And that is all that Aunty Emang seemed prepared to say on the subject—which was a bit dismissive, thought Mma Ramotswe, and now that poor, over-anxious boy would think that not only did his teacher not like him, but neither did Aunty Emang. But perhaps there was not enough space in the newspaper to go into the matter in any great depth because there was the final letter to be printed, which was not a short one.

“Dear Aunty Emang,” the letter ran. “Four years ago my wife gave birth to our first born. We had been trying for this baby for a long time and we were very happy when he arrived. When it came to choosing a name for this child, my wife suggested that we should call him after my brother, who lives in Mahalapye but who comes to see us every month. She said that this would be a good thing, as my brother does not have a wife himself and it would be good to have a name from a member of the family. I was happy with this and agreed.

“As my son has been growing up, my brother has been very kind to him. He has given him many presents and packets of sweets when he comes to see him. The boy likes his uncle very much and always listens very carefully to the stories that he tells him. My wife thinks that this is a good thing—that a boy should love his kind uncle like this.