Mma Ramotswe now remembered that Mma Potokwane had also spoken to her about Mma Felo. She had said something about her kindness; so that was true, even if Mma Felo mentioned it herself.

“I often used to see you, Mma,” went on Mma Felo. “You used to drive past our place, past the hotel. You had that small van. That small white van.”

Mma Ramotswe lowered her eyes. It was still raw, that place in her memory. “I had such a van, Mma.”

Mma Felo spoke gently. “Mma Potokwane told me about it. She said that you were very sad when the van was sold. She said that your husband made you do it.”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head. “No, that’s not really true, Mma. My husband is a mechanic, as you know, and he had been saying for a long time that the van was getting a little bit old. He was probably right. He didn’t make me do it—it was just that we couldn’t fix it. That was all. We sold it for scrap, for spare parts or something like that. It went up north.”

“To my nephew,” said Mma Felo. She looked at Mma Ramotswe. “He is very good with his hands, you know. He is one of those natural mechanics.”

Mma Ramotswe smiled, in spite of the memory of her van, in spite of that pain. “I know about such people, Mma. I married one.”

Mma Felo agreed. Her own car had been repaired by her nephew on more than one occasion, and he had fixed her fridge, and washing machine, and many other small things about the house. “Everything would fall to pieces without such people,” she said. “The whole country would fall apart, bit by bit.”

For a moment Mma Ramotswe imagined a Botswana without mechanics, without people like Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and Mma Felo’s nephew. Nothing would work, and it would be like living full-time at some remote cattle post, where there was only sky and bush and the sweet smell of the cattle; where water would have to be fetched from remote wells where the bucket-winding mechanisms would eventually fail; where the roads would disappear because there would be no tractors and no graders to repair them. There were places like that in Africa—places where the mechanics had gone, or had never been in the first place; where the wind blew in dusty eddies about decaying buildings and broken masonry and signs that had long since ceased to be intelligible; where people had simply given up, had worked hard, perhaps, and dreamed, and then just given up. That was not Botswana, of course, but one had to be watchful.

“You are right about that, Mma,” she said. “We would miss people like that.”