Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was unmoved. “If you think that, Charlie, you’re in for a big surprise.”

“Hah!” said Fanwell, who had been following this exchange with interest. “A very big surprise! Maybe you need to tell him about some things, Boss. Maybe Charlie doesn’t know yet!”

Charlie had been bettered, and he left the subject at that. But the following day, armed with a screwdriver and drill, he had installed a cheap wall mirror directly above the washbasin. For the use of modern men, he had written underneath. Some time later that day, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had taken a pen to the notice and altered the wording to read, NOT For the use of modernest men. Fanwell particularly appreciated this: “That will show him, Rra,” he said. “That will teach him to think he’s so big and handsome!”

The mirror remained, though, and was regularly used by Charlie, even if neither Fanwell nor Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni made any use of it—or admitted to doing so. Vanity was one of Charlie’s shortcomings, but it had always been tolerated by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who also put up with Charlie’s early stopping of work and unseemly dash for the door, while Fanwell continued at his post until five and then took five minutes to put away his tools and tidy up. Then it was time for him to board one of the swaying, overloaded minibuses that plied the Old Naledi route. If he was lucky, he would not have to wait long before one of these minibuses arrived, and then the journey never took more than fifteen minutes, depending on traffic. Jumping off at his stop, he would cross the road, leap across the storm drain, and walk down the unpaved road that disappeared into the heart of the informal suburb.

Old Naledi was the one scar on the neat landscape of Gaborone. While there were other places that had cheap housing, none was as cheap as this, with its rickety houses made half of breeze-block, half of mud daub, their roofs consisting of tarpaulins, odd sheets of corrugated tin, and such other bits of building material as could be scavenged from here and there. It was not quite a shanty town, but at times it seemed to be not far off that, so great was the contrast between its evident poverty and the well-found prosperity of the other parts of the town.