Unaware of Mma Makutsi's fantasy, Mma Ramotswe made her way slowly along the edge of the road. The traffic was light in that direction, as most of the cars were coming out of town, heading back to the sprawling village of Tlokweng. She was now passing the eucalyptus trees that stretched out towards the dam to the south; she drove past these trees every day, and she thought that she knew them well. But now, on foot, it was as if she saw them for the first time. She loved their scent, that slightly prickly scent that reminded her of the handkerchiefs that her father's cousin used. She would put a few drops of eucalyptus oil onto the cloth and let the young Precious smell them. “That keeps away colds,” the cousin said. “If you put eucalyptus oil on your handkerchief, your nose is safe. Always.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled at the memory. She did not think that eucalyptus oil made a difference; she had read somewhere that nothing made a difference to colds other than washing your hands after you had touched a person suffering from one. People believed all manner of things, in the face of all the evidence, but if they did not, well, what then? What if we stopped believing in things that we could not prove? We had to believe in something, she thought. We had to believe in kindness and courtesy and telling the truth; we had to believe in the old Botswana values— all of these things could not be proved in the way in which one could prove that nothing made a difference to colds, and yet we had to believe them.

Such thoughts to be thinking while walking along the side of the Tlokweng Road; but at least they distracted her, even if only temporarily, from a growing feeling of discomfort in her right foot. Now, as Mma Ramotswe turned off into the area known as the village, to walk along Odi Drive, she realised that what she was developing was a blister, and a painful one at that. She stopped, crouched down, and took off her shoe, feeling gingerly for that place where she thought the pain came from. Yes, the skin was raised there; it was a blister.

She wondered whether she should remove her right shoe, or possibly both shoes. There was a time when she would have thought nothing of that; as a child and then as a young woman she would happily walk about unshod, particularly in the sand, which gave such a fine feeling to the soles of the feet. But now her feet had become softer and the very earth seemed to have become thornier and less hospitable.

She replaced her shoe and began to walk down Odi Drive. The blister was quite painful now, and she was having to put less weight on that leg, resulting in a hobbling motion. Zebra Drive was still a long way away—at least twenty minutes, she thought, and she could imagine what her foot would be like at the end of that.