And as she said this, she gave him a look that implied that any dangers about which he was concerned were ones that she would be very careful about—whatever they were.

THE LANDS TO WHICH Mma Potokwane was suspected of retreating lay to the west of Gaborone, some distance beyond Molepolole, hard against the edge of the Kalahari, the great semi-desert that made up the heart of the country. This was dry land at the limits of the inhabitable, and fields here, if they could be called fields, grew very little: a few melons and patches of sorghum—not much more than that. Yet the families who tilled them, scratching at the parched soil to coax growth out of what sometimes seemed little more than powdered stone, did so by ancient right. This is where their people had been as far back as anybody could remember, and they maintained this link with the land even after they had moved to towns and villages. Each year the women and children would trek off to their lands for weeks at a time, to plant and tend the crops. It was a ritual that survived growing prosperity, even when there was no real need to harvest these small crops; it was a way of showing children who they were and reminding adults of the same thing.

“You do know the way, don’t you?” asked Mma Makutsi as they left Molepolole behind them and began to follow the smaller road west.

Mma Ramotswe sounded confident. “Yes,” she said. “We follow this road to Takatokwane and then after that we go that way.” She pointed vaguely towards the north.

Mma Makutsi glanced at her nervously. “That way, Mma?”

“Yes. There is a road that goes like this …” She made a winding gesture. “We don’t follow that one.”

“No?”

“No. We follow the one that goes like this.” The gesture now was more up-and-down. “That’s the road we need to look out for. Then, after a while—quite a long time, because you have to go very slowly—there is a place where the road splits in two, or maybe three.”

“Which is it, Mma? Two or three?”

Mma Ramotswe shrugged. “I cannot remember everything, Mma. But I will know which way to go, I promise you. I have been taught these things.”

Mma Makutsi remained silent while she digested this information. Then she asked what exactly Mma Ramotswe had been taught. The road system of Botswana?

Mma Ramotswe smiled. “You cannot learn all the roads of Botswana, Mma. That would be a lifetime’s work because they are always changing roads and adding to them. They look at a map, those people in the Roads Department, and then they draw a line across it and say that is the best place for a new road. Let us build a new road soon. That is what they say.”

“And then they have tea,” added Mma Makutsi.