Mr J.L.B. Matekoni wiped his hands on a piece of rag and stuffed the rag back into his pocket. The noise seemed to be coming closer now, and then he saw it, emerging from the scrub bush that obscured the twists of the path: a wheelchair, in which a girl was sitting, propelling the chair herself. When she looked up from the path ahead of her and saw Mr J.L.B. Matekoni she stopped, her hands gripping the rims of the wheels. For a moment they stared at one another, and then she smiled and began to make her way over the last few yards of pathway.

She greeted him politely, as a well-brought-up child would do.

“I hope that you are well, Rra,” she said, offering her right hand while her left hand laid across the forearm in a gesture of respect.

They shook hands.

“I hope that my hands are not too oily,” said Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “I have been working on the pump.”

The girl nodded. “I have brought you some water, Rra. Mma Potokwane said that you had come out here without anything to drink and you might be thirsty.”

She reached into a bag that was slung under the seat of the chair and extracted a bottle.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni took the water gratefully. He had just begun to feel thirsty and was regretting his failure to bring water with him. He took a swig from the bottle, watching the girl as he drank. She was still very young—about eleven or twelve, he thought—and she had a pleasant, open face. Her hair had been braided, and there were beads worked into the knots. She wore a faded blue dress, almost bleached to white by repeated washings, and a pair of scruffy tackies on her feet.

“Do you live here?” he asked. “On the farm?”

She nodded. “I have been here nearly one year,” she answered. “I am here with my young brother. He is only five.”

“Where did you come from?”

She lowered her gaze. “We came from up near Francistown. My mother is late. She died three years ago, when I was nine. We lived with a woman, in her yard. Then she told us we had to go.”

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni said nothing. Mma Potokwane had told him the stories of some of the orphans, and each time he found that it made his heart smart with pain. In traditional society there was no such thing as an unwanted child; everybody would be looked after by somebody. But things were changing, and now there were orphans. This was particularly so now that there was this disease which was stalking through Africa. There were many more children now without parents and the orphan farm might be the only place for some of them to go. Is this what had happened to this girl? And why was she in a wheelchair?

He stopped his line of thought. There was no point in speculating about things which one could do little to help. There were more immediate questions to be answered, such as why was the wheelchair making such an odd noise.