“We live in Gaborone, Mma. My father had a bottle store—you may know the one, over by the supermarket. Yes, that one. People used to call it a gold mine, and I wondered why they did that when it was a store and not a mine. Then, when I got a bit older, I knew that they were talking about how much money the store made, which is true. My father made quite a bit of money. Then he died. That is often the way it works, Mma Ramotswe: a man makes a lot of money and then he dies before he has the time to enjoy the fruits of his labour.

“My poor father would have liked to have enjoyed his money. I said to him, ‘Daddy, you are an old man now, and an old man does not have to work. You have earned the right to sit in the sun now. You are entitled to count your cattle.’ He thought about this, but he was worried about looking after the bottle store. ‘You have a good manager,’ I said. ‘He can run the store for you and you can retire. That is the way to do it.’ I did not want to run the bottle store, Mma, because I was studying biology and I wanted to work in a laboratory. You understand that, I think, Mma Ramotswe. I have heard people talking about you. They say that you are a lady who understands everything.

“My father listened to my advice. He was sad that I did not want to take over the bottle store, as it would have given him great pleasure to see a big sign above the store saying Kereleng and Son. But he wanted me to be happy and to do the things that I wanted to do, and so he put the manager in charge. ‘He is a very good businessman,’ he said to me. ‘I shall not be surprised to find out after a year that I have not one bottle store, but two. Perhaps even three!’

“I said, ‘I am very happy for you, my daddy. Now you can go back to the village and talk to all the old men there. You will have a lot to talk about after all these years.’

“He went back to the village, Mma Ramotswe, and I got a job in the Ministry of Agriculture, in their laboratory. I was very happy doing that work, and my father was very happy out in the village. He wrote to me every two weeks and told me what he and his friends were talking about. Which was not very much, Mma—you know how old men are. They always talk about the same things and tell the same stories many times. Do you remember when we had that drought, the bad one? Do you remember that man who brewed the beer that made everybody sick? Do you remember …