sheepishly. They were no match for Mma Ramotswe, and they knew it.
“But I don’t want to talk about litter,” said Mma Ramotswe kindly. “I can see that you have been working very hard today, and I thought I would drive you both home. It will save you waiting for a minibus.”
“You are very kind, Mma,” said the older apprentice.
Mma Ramotswe gestured to the passenger seat. “You sit in there, Charlie. You are the older one. And you,” she looked at the younger apprentice and pointed to the back of the van, “you can go there. Next time you can ride in front.”
She had a rough idea where the two young men lived. The younger one stayed with his uncle in a house beyond the Francistown Road brewery and the older one lodged with an aunt and uncle near the orphan farm at Tlokweng. It would take over half an hour to deliver them both, and the children would be waiting for her at home, but this was important and she would do it cheerfully.
She would deliver the younger one first, skirting the edge of the town, driving past the university and the Sun Hotel and the road to Maru-a-Pula. Then Nyerere Drive bore left, past the end of Elephant Road, and ran down to Nelson Mandela Drive, which she still thought of as the old Francistown Road. They crossed the dry course of the Segoditshane River and then the older apprentice directed her to a side road lined by a row of small, well-kept houses.
“That is his uncle’s place over there,” he said, pointing to one of the houses. “He lives in that shack on the side. That is where he sleeps, but he eats inside with the family.”
They stopped outside the gate and the younger apprentice jumped out of the van and clapped his hands in gratitude. Mma Ramotswe smiled and said through the open window, “I am glad that I saved you a walk.” Then she waved and they drove off.
“He is a good boy,” said Mma Ramotswe. “He will make a good husband for some girl one day.”
“Hah!” said the older apprentice. “That girl will have to catch him first. He is a quick runner, that boy. It will not be easy for the girls!”
Mma Ramotswe pretended to look interested. “But what if a very beautiful girl with lots of money saw him? What then? Surely he would like to marry a girl like that and have a large car? Perhaps even one of those German cars that you think are so smart. What then?”
The apprentice laughed. “Oh, I would marry a girl like that double-quick. But girls like that won’t look at boys like us. We are just apprentice mechanics. Girls like that want boys from rich families or with very good jobs. Accountants. People like that. We just get ordinary girls.”
Mma Ramotswe clucked her tongue. “Oh! That is very sad. It is a pity that you don’t know how to attract more glamorous girls. It is a great pity.” She paused before saying, almost as an aside, “I could tell you, of course.”
The apprentice looked at her incredulously. “You, Mma? You could tell me how to attract that sort of girl?”
“Of course I could,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I am a woman, remember? I used to be a girl. I know how girls think. Just because I am a bit older now and I do not run round looking at boys doesn’t mean that I have forgotten how girls think.”
The apprentice raised an eyebrow. “You tell me then,” he said. “You tell me this secret.”
Mma Ramotswe was silent. This, she thought, was the difficult part. She had to make sure that the apprentice would take what she had to say seriously, and that meant that she should not be too quick to impart the information.
“I don’t know whether I should tell you,” she said. “I cannot just tell anybody. I would only want to tell a man who would be kind to these glamorous girls. Just because they are glamorous doesn’t mean that they do not have their feelings. Maybe I should wait a few years before I tell you.”
The apprentice, who had been smiling, now frowned. “I would treat such a girl very well, Mma. You can count on me.”
Mma Ramotswe concentrated on her driving. There was an elderly man on a bicycle ahead of them, a battered hat perched on his head, and a red hen tied to the carrier on the back of his cycle. She slowed down, giving him a wide berth.
“That hen is making its last journey,” she said. “He will be taking it to somebody who will eat it.”
The apprentice glanced behind him. “That is what happens to all hens. That is what they are for.”
“They may not think that,” said Mma Ramotswe.
The apprentice laughed. “They cannot think. They have very small heads. There are no brains in a chicken.”
“What is in their heads, then?” asked Mma Ramotswe.
“There is just blood and some bits of meat,” said the apprentice. “I have seen it. There is no brain.”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “Oh,” she said. There was no point in arguing with these boys about matters of this sort; they were usually quite adamant that they were right, even if there was no basis for what they said.
“But what is this thing about girls?” the apprentice persisted. “You can tell me, Mma. I may talk about girls a lot, but I am very kind to them. You ask Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. He has seen how well I treat girls.”
They were now nearing the Tlokweng Road, and Mma Ramotswe thought that the time was ripe. She had aroused the apprentice’s attention and now he was listening to her.
“Well then,” she began, “I will tell you a very certain way to attract the attention of one of these glamorous girls. You must become well-known. If you are well-known-if your name is in the papers-then these girls cannot resist you. You look about you and see what sort of man has that sort of lady. It is always the ones who are in the papers. They get those girls every time.”
The apprentice looked immediately defeated. “That is not good news for me,” he said. “I shall never be well-known. I shall never get into the papers.”
“Why not?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “Why give up before you have started?”
“Because nobody is ever going to write about me,” said the apprentice. “I am just an unknown person. I am not going to be famous.”
“But look at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Look at him. He was in the papers today. Now he is well-known.”
“That is different,” the apprentice retorted. “He is in the papers because he is going to do a parachute jump.”
“But you could do that,” said Mma Ramotswe, as if the idea had just occurred. “If you were to jump out of an aeroplane you would be all over the papers and the glamorous girls would notice all right. They would be all over you. I know how these girls think.”
“But…” began the apprentice.
He did not finish. “Oh yes they would,” Mma Ramotswe went on. “There is nothing-nothing- that they like more than bravery. If you jumped out of the plane-maybe instead of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who is possibly too old to do that these days-then you would be the one who would get all the attention. I guarantee it. Those girls would be waiting for you. You could take your pick. You could choose the one with the biggest car.”
“If she had the biggest car then she would also have the biggest bottom,” said the apprentice, smiling. “She would need a big car to fit her bottom in. Such a girl would be very nice.”
Mma Ramotswe would normally not have let such a remark pass without a sharp retort, but this was not the occasion, and she simply smiled. “It seems simple to me,” she said. “You do the jump. You get the girl. It’s perfectly safe.”
The apprentice thought for a moment. “But what about that Botswana Defence Force man? The one whose parachute didn’t open. What about him?”
