“This problem,” he went on, “hurts me here. Right here—in my heart.”

Mma Ramotswe inclined her head gravely. Everybody who consulted her was, in their way, hurting—even this rich man with his big Mercedes-Benz and his expensive cuff-links. Human hurt was like lightning; it did not choose its targets, but struck, with rough equality and little regard to position, achievement, or moral desert.

“I have worked very hard, Mma Ramotswe,” Mr. Molofololo went on. “Ever since I was a small boy I have worked. I herded cattle, you know, the same as all small boys from the villages. We were poor people, you understand. And then I went to school and I worked harder than any of the other boys. When the other boys were playing football, I studied and studied. Then when the school principal asked me what I wanted to be, I said that I would be an accountant. I had read somewhere about CAs, and I said, I will be a CA one day. And that is what I now am. I am a chartered accountant, but I am also a businessman. I have many shops. Here. There. Many shops.”

Mma Ramotswe noticed that Mma Makutsi was listening intently to this, and she knew why. Her assistant had worked her way out of poverty, and had achieved ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College by dint of sheer, unremitting hard work. If Mma Makutsi identified with Mr. Molofololo's story, it was because it was her story too, except for the herding, and the football, the chartered accountancy, and the shops—except for all the details, in fact.

“But you know how it is, Mma,” Mr. Molofololo continued. “When you are a success in business, you begin to think of the things that you've missed while you were working so hard. That is why you hear people say: I have been working, working, working, and now my children are grown up and I did not see that happen. Have you heard people say that, Mma?”

Mma Ramotswe had not, but she could imagine that people might indeed say it, so she nodded.

Mr. Molofololo leaned back in his chair. “And do you know what I thought, Mma Ramotswe? I will tell you. I thought: I never played football, and now it is too late. That is what I thought. You can't have a man in his fifties running round the football field, can you? His heart will say no. So it was too late.”

He paused, and then, with the air of one making an important announcement, he said, “But if it was too late to play football myself, it was not too late to buy a football team, Mma. Hah! So I bought a team that had not been doing very well—a nothing, useless team—and I got rid of all those lazy players and put in new ones who wanted to score lots of goals. And that's how the Kalahari Swoopers were born. Now you see us right up there, up at the top of the league most of the time, or number two at least. Until recently, that is. I did that. I did all that myself.”