I WAS ANGRY with the manager, as you can expect, and I did try to find him. However I soon realised that there was very little I could do, as he had gone over the border to South Africa. Once people do that, Mma, then they are lost. If you are chasing anybody, catch them before they get to the border or you will never catch them. You may as well chase smoke rising from a fire.

“I put the money I had left into the bank, as I thought that I would buy a house. Then I could settle down and find a wife and start a family. It would be a very good life. But the way it worked out was the other way round—I found a lady first, before I found the house.

“Let me tell you about this lady. She is a very beautiful lady—one of the most beautiful ladies in Botswana. And it is not just me who says that—it is everybody. Anybody who meets that lady says the same thing. She could be Miss Botswana twice over, if you ask me.

“I met her at a hotel. There was a jazz concert, and I was there with some friends. This lady and some of her friends joined us—we had a very good time. She knew who I was, I think, because she had heard about our bottle store, as everybody had. I told her that I had sold the bottle store. She was interested in that. She asked me where I had put the money—only joking, she said. But I told her anyway—I said that I had put it in the Standard Bank. She laughed and said that the bank was always the safest place to put money, and that people who put their money under their beds were asking for trouble. She said that an aunt of hers had put two thousand pula under her mattress and had left it there for a year. When she went back, she discovered that the money had been eaten by ants, and there were only a few scraps of paper left.

“I saw this lady the following day, and we went for a drink in a different hotel. Then the next day we went to have a meal at the Sun Hotel. She liked that place, as she said it was very sophisticated. I said to her, ‘Anywhere you like, I like.’ And she said, ‘We are very well suited—maybe we can live together. You did say that you were thinking of buying a house.’ I told her that I was, and she suggested that we go and look for a house together. I could not believe my luck: here I was, going off to choose a house with one of the most glamorous ladies in Botswana, and I a scientific officer (second class) in the government laboratories. I thought that I was a very lucky man.