“To order about,” interjected Mma Makutsi, and then laughed. “No, Rra, do not worry. I am only joking about that.”

MR J.L.B. MATEKONI was busy at lunchtime, taking the remaining apprentice off with him to deal with a breakdown out on the Molepolole Road. So it was only Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi who sat in the office listening to Mr Polopetsi while he told his story. Mma Makutsi had made sandwiches for them with the bread they kept in the office cupboard—thick slices with generous helpings of jam—and Mma Ramotswe noticed how eagerly Mr Polopetsi tackled the food. He is hungry, she thought, and realised that he had probably been giving what little food there was to his family. She signalled to Mma Makutsi to make more sandwiches, which Mr Polopetsi wolfed down as he spoke.

“I was born in Lobatse,” he began. “My father was one of the attendants at the mental hospital there. You will know the place. His job was to help the doctors control the very sick people who struggled when the doctors tried to treat them. There were some very strong patients and they would shout and strike out at everybody. My father was a strong man too, and he had a special jacket that he could put on these people and tie their arms behind them. That would make it easier for the doctors.

“I worked hard at school. I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up, but when the examinations came along I did not do well enough. I knew the answers to the questions, because I had worked so hard, but I became very frightened when the examinations started and I could not write properly. My hand would shake and shake and the examiners must have wondered who was this stupid boy who could not even write neatly. So I never did as well as I should have. If I hadn’t shaken like that, then maybe I would have been given a scholarship and gone off to South Africa to study medicine. That happened to one boy at my school, but it did not happen to me.

“But I did not sit and complain about this because I knew that God would find me some other work. And He did. When I was sixteen I was given a job in the hospital where my father worked. There is a pharmacy in the hospital and they needed somebody to wash the bottles and to help carry and lift things. I also had to write notes in the drugs stock book, and I had to count the bottles and the pills. I was very good at that and they made me a pharmacy assistant when I was twenty. That was a very good job. I even took some examinations to do with that work and I found that I was not so frightened this time. I wrote neatly and I passed.