New Kid On The Blog

30-MAR-2010:

I read the first chapter and thought I would give up, but somehow and I read on and in the 2nd chapter, things got interesting. Before I knew it, I've finished the whole book. It is about an African woman, Mma Ramotswe (her name was Precious Ramotswe, who set up the first and only private detective agency in her hometown (Botswana) which was run by a lady detective. From reading the book, I deduced that the Africans address their women as 'Mma' (which may mean madam or mrs) and men as 'Rra'. Mma Ramotswe started her detective agency with the money that her father left her. He earned everything that he had from working in the mines in South Africa.

But things were bad in the past. Before we built our country we had to go off to South Africa to work. We went to the mines, just as people did from Lesotho and Mozambique and Malawi and all those countries. The mines sucked our men in and left the old men and the children at home. We dug for gold and diamonds and made those white men rich. They built their big houses, with their walls and their cars. And we dug down below them and brought out the rock on which they built it all.

Obed Ramotswe (Mma Ramotswe's father) died at the age of sixty.

I am sixty now, and I do not think God wants me to live much longer. Perhaps there will be a few years more, but I doubt it.

Some people cannot bear news like that. They think they must live forever, and they cry and wail when they realise their time is coming. I do not feel that, and I did not weep at the news which the doctor gave me.

At the age of sixteen, Precious Ramotswe met her husband Note Mokoti, who was a Jazz musician. He was also violent, and eventually left her with her unborn child. The child passed away just 5 days after he? she? was born.

He hurt her. She asked him to stop, but he put her head back and hit her once across her cheek. But immediately kissed her where the blow had struck, and said that he had not meant to do it. All the time he was pushing against her, and scratching at her, sometimes across her back, with his fingernails. Then he moved her over, and he hurt her again, and struck her across her back with his belt.

He came home late and he smelled of beer when he returned. It was a sour smell, like rancid milk, and she turned her head away as he pushed her down on the bed and pulled at her clothing.

"You have had a lot of beer. You have had a good evening."

He looked at her, his eyes slightly out of focus.

"I can drink if I want to. You're one of these women who stays at home and complains? Is that what you are?"

"I am not. I only meant to say that you had a good evening."

But his indignation would not be assuaged, and he said: "You are making me punish you, woman. You are making me do this thing to you."

She cried out, and tried to struggle, to push him away, but he was too strong for her.

"Don't hurt the baby."

"Baby! Why do you talk about this baby? It is not mine. I am not the father of any baby."

After her father passed away, she lived alone, running her detective agency. The book talked about the cases that she dealt with. Some of them are rather interesting particularly one where an Indian father hired her to find out who his daughter's boyfriend was so that he could get rid of him and arrange another man for her daughter. Such was the culture of the Indians.

There is a sequel, but I only recommend if you have nothing to read. :-D It is not bad, but not one of my favourites.

# posted by Skye @ 9:32 pm