Puso, of course, was bursting with excitement as he prepared for his football outing. This excitement was mixed with a certain self-importance: he had been told to report to Mr. Molofololo when he arrived at the game, and he would be allowed to help the team get ready. He now spoke of the team as “us” and Mr. Molofololo as “my friend, Rra Molofololo.” But he was realistic, too, for all his enthusiasm, and told Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni as they drove to the match that he thought it likely that the Molepolole Squibs would win.

“You never know,” said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “You never know what can happen.”

“We will not play well,” said Puso. “We are full of bad luck at the moment.”

And when he was collected at the end of the match, his expression told Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni everything, even before the young boy had climbed into the cab of the truck.

“No?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

“The Squibs won,” said Puso. “They are not a very strong team, but they won. They scored so many goals.”

“But it was a good game?” asked Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

“If you were a Squib,” said Puso.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was thoughtful. There would have to be a lesson about sportsmanship, and about enjoying a game, no matter what the outcome. It was sometimes a hard lesson to be learned, and some people never learned it, but it was needed. He looked at Puso and tried to remember what it was like to be that age. You wanted things so much—that was it: you wanted things so much that you ached. And sometimes you believed that you could make the things you yearned for happen, just by willing them. He had done that himself—he remembered it vividly, when as a boy he had lost a favourite uncle and he had walked out into the bush and looked up at the sky and addressed God directly: Please make him not be dead. Please make him not be dead. And when he had got home, he had half expected that his act of willing would have somehow worked and his uncle would have miraculously recovered. But of course there was still the sound of keening women and the black armbands and all the other signs that it had not worked: the world is the world in spite of all our wishes to the contrary.

When they returned to the house, Mma Ramotswe was up from her nap and was chopping onions in the kitchen. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni told her that the Kalahari Swoopers had not played well—as everyone expected—and that Puso was taking it badly.

“He'll learn,” she said. “We all learn about losing.”

“Except Mr. Molofololo,” mused Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. “I'm not sure that he's learned about losing.”

“No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Some people like that seem not to have learned these simple lessons.”

Puso came into the kitchen and began to tell her about the game. After a few minutes, she lost track of what he was saying. It was something about tackles and fouls and penalties— technical details that she had heard people talking about over the past weeks but that still meant very little to her. And then, by chance, she said, “And did you talk to the players? Did Mr. Molofololo let you help, as he said he would?”