Mr J. L. B. Matekoni glanced furtively at the man in the car parked beside his truck. This man, who looked a few years younger than he was, seemed vaguely familiar and he wondered whether he knew him. The problem with Gaborone was that there were so many people you recognised but could not name. These were people you saw going about their business in the same place and at the same time as you went about yours. After a couple of such encounters you felt that you knew them, even if you did not. Then there were the people whom you did not quite know, but who were known to people you did know. You almost knew these people, and indeed you might end up waving to them or greeting them in the street because you knew – and they knew too – some other person who linked you to them and them to you. These people you might subsequently meet at weddings and funerals, when they were united with you in joy or in grief, and then you might talk to them as if they were old friends.

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni got out of his truck at the same time as the man next to him emerged from his vehicle. They both looked at one another sheepishly before the other man spoke.

‘I am only here because I have been told to be here,’ he announced.

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni laughed. ‘It will be very good for us, Rra. It’ll be like going to the dentist.’

This exchange gave rise to a warm flow of fellow feeling. Misfortune, shared even with a stranger, or with somebody who was a stranger until he could remember where he met him, made things easier as they walked the short distance to the classroom. On the door in front of them, which was half-open, was a large sign saying simply: Husband Course. Through the door they saw a small group of earlier arrivals – twelve or so – seated behind individual desks. Nobody was speaking.

Mr J. L. B. Matekoni sat down at the back, his new friend preferring the front row. Glances were exchanged with the others present: quick glances of assessment followed by conspiracy. It was, thought Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, rather like one of those groups where people with a problem – drinking or gambling or something of that sort – came together for mutual help and support. What united these men was presumably a failure on their part to understand that marriage had changed; that women were no longer prepared to do everything for husbands who took their wives, and all the work they did, for granted.