Kalahari Typing School for Men (9 page)

Mma Ramotswe nodded. She understood. Shortly after opening the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, she had discovered that part of her role would be to listen to people and to help them unburden themselves of their past. And indeed her subsequent reading of Clovis Andersen had confirmed this.
Be gentle
, he had written.
Many of the people who will come to see you are injured in spirit. They need to talk about things that have hurt them, or about things that they have done. Do not sit in judgement on them, but listen. Just listen
.

They had reached a place where the path dipped down into a dried-up watercourse. There was a termite mound to one side of it, and on the other, a small expanse of rock rising out of the red
earth. There was the chewed-up pith of sugarcane lying to the side of the path and a fragment of broken blue glass, which caught the sun. Not far away a goat was standing on its hind legs, nibbling at the less accessible leaves of a shrub. It was a good place to sit and listen, under a sky that had seen so much and heard so much that one more wicked deed would surely make no difference. Sins, thought Mma Ramotswe, are darker and more powerful when contemplated within confining walls. Out in the open, under such a sky as this, misdeeds were reduced to their natural proportions—small, mean things that could be faced quite openly, sorted, and folded away.

M
MA MAKUTSI
watched Mma Ramotswe set off for her walk with Mr. Molefelo and said to herself: “This is one of the limitations of being only an assistant detective. I miss the important things. I hear about the clients at one remove. I am really just a secretary, not an assistant detective.” And, turning to the pile of garage bills which was now ready for dispatch, she thought: “I am not really an assistant garage manager, either; I am a garage secretary, which is a different thing altogether.”

She rose from her desk to make herself a cup of bush tea. Even if a client had arrived—and there was no guarantee that the consultation taking place on the walk would mature into a full-scale, paid investigation—the future of the agency, and of her job, looked doubtful. There was also the question of money. She knew that Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni paid her as generously as they could, but after she had paid her increasingly
expensive rent and sent money home to her parents and aunts in Bobonong, there was virtually nothing left for her to spend on herself. She was aware of the fact that some of her dresses were wearing thin and that her shoes would need resoling before too long. She did her best to keep her appearance smart, but it was difficult on a tight budget. At the moment, all that she had in her savings account was two hundred and thirty-eight pula and forty-five thebe. That would not be enough for a pair of good new shoes or a couple of dresses. And once she had spent that, there would be nothing left to buy the medicines that she might need for her brother.

Mma Makutsi realised that the only way of improving her situation was to take on extra work in her spare time. The driving school had been a good idea, but the more she thought about it, the more she realised that it would not work. She imagined what would happen if she were to speak about it to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. He would be supportive, of course, but she could hear his response, even before he made it.

“The insurance will be too expensive,” he would point out. “If you are going to let learners drive a car, you have to pay a very high premium. The insurance companies know that they will crash.”

He would tell her what the extra premium was likely to be, and she would be shocked by the figure. If that was what she would have to pay, then her earlier calculations were all wrong. They would have to charge very much more for each lesson, and that would cut out any advantage they might have over the large driving schools, which could use economies of scale. So the idea, which had seemed to offer a real prospect of extra money, would have to be abandoned, and she would have to start thinking of alternatives.

It was while she was typing a letter to one of the garage’s rrecalcitrant debtors that the idea occurred to her. It was such a
strikingly good idea that it took over her train of thought and became incorporated in the letter itself:

“Dear Sir,” she typed, “We have written to you before on 25/11 and 18/12 and 14/2 about the outstanding sum of five hundred and twenty-two pula in respect of the repair of your vehicle. We note that you have not paid this sum and we have therefore no alternative but to. … Isn’t it an interesting thing that most typists are women? When I was at the Botswana Secretarial College, it was only women, and yet men have to type if they want to use computers, which they do if they are engineers or businessmen or work in banks. I have seen them sitting in banks trying to type with one finger and wasting a lot of time. Why do they not learn to type properly? The answer to that is that they are ashamed to say they cannot type and they do not want to go and have to learn with a class full of girls. They are worried that the girls would be better at typing than they are! And they would be! Even those useless girls who only got fifty percent at the college. Even they would be better than men. So why not have a special class for men—a typing school for men? They could come after work and learn to type with other men. We could hold this class in a church hall, perhaps, so that when the men came to it, people would think that they were just going to a church meeting. I could teach it myself. I would be the principal and would give the men a special certificate at the end of the course. This is to certify that Mr. So-and-So completed the course on typing for men and is now a proficient typist. Signed, Grace P. Makutsi, Principal, Kalahari Typing School for Men.”

She finished typing the letter and drew it from the machine with a flourish. She was astonished at the way in which the words had flowed from her, and by the completeness, the utter right-ness, of the business plan which the letter contained. Reading over it again, she reflected on the fundamental insight into male
psychology which had sprung, unannounced, from the typewriter keys. Of course it was right that men did not like to see women doing things better than they did; this was something which every girl learned at an early age. She remembered how her brothers had been unable to bear losing any game to her or one of her sisters. They had to win, and if there was any sign that they might lose, the game would be abandoned on some pretext or other. And this was no different from adult life.

Typing, of course, was a special case. Not only was there male anxiety about being bettered by women in the operation of a machine (men liked to think that they were the ones who understood how to use machines), but there was the additional embarrassment for them of being seen to do something which many people viewed as a woman’s activity. Men did not like to be secretaries and had invented a special word for men who had to do any of that sort of work. They called themselves clerks. But what was the difference between a clerk and a secretary? One wore trousers and one wore a dress.

Mma Makutsi was convinced of the workability of her idea but realised there were many obstacles that would need to be overcome. First and foremost of these was a fundamental issue of what she had been taught at the Botswana Secretarial College to call capitalisation, but which, in simple language, meant money. Her capital was the grand total of two hundred and thirty eight pula and forty-five thebe, and that would buy, at the most, one secondhand typewriter. For a class of ten, she would need ten typewriters, which, at four hundred pula each, came to four thousand pula. This was a fabulous sum which would take her years to save. And even if she were able to borrow it from the bank, interest rates were such that all the fees from the students would go into payments. Not that the bank would lend to her in the first
place, with no track record of profit and no security, not even one cow, for the loan.

There seemed no way round this brute fact of economic existence. To make money, one needed to have money in the first place. That was why those who had came by more and more. Mma Ramotswe was an example of this. Although she was always very modest about her circumstances, she had started with the great advantage of being able to sell all those cattle left to her by her father, just at a time when the price of cattle had shot up. And she had inherited his savings, too, which had been wisely placed in a part share of a store and a piece of ground. The piece of ground, it turned out, had been exactly where a company needed to build a depot on the edge of Gaborone, and that had driven the price up to unimaginable levels. All this had enabled Mma Ramotswe to buy the house in Zebra Drive and to set up the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. That was why Mma Ramotswe was the owner and she was the employee, and nothing, it seemed, would change that. Of course, she could marry a man with money, but what man with money would even look at her when there were all those glamorous girls around? Really, it was all very bleak.

Typewriters! Who had a large supply of old, partly unworkable typewriters gathering dust in a storeroom? The Botswana Secretarial College!

Mma Makutsi picked up the telephone. There was a rule that personal calls from the garage and the agency were not allowed. (“This is not directed against you,” Mma Ramotswe had said, “it’s those apprentices. Imagine if they were able to speak on the phone from work to all those girls. We would not be able to pay the bill, or even half of it.”) This was different. This was work, even if a sideline.

She dialled the number of the college and politely enquired
after the health of the telephonist at the other end before she asked to speak to the assistant principal, Mma Manapotsi. She knew Mma Manapotsi well and often chatted with her if they met in town.

“We have always been so proud of you,” said Mma Manapotsi. “Ninety-seven percent! I shall never forget that. We still haven’t had any other girl, not a single one, who has managed more than eighty-five percent. Your name is secure in the annals of the college! We are so proud.”

“But you must also be proud of your son,” Mma Makutsi would remind her. Mma Manapotsi’s son, Harry, was a successful footballer, a member of the Zebras team and famous for scoring a crucial goal in a match against the Bulawayo Dynamos the previous year. He was an inveterate ladies’ man, as many of these footballers were, and his hair was always covered with a curious sticky gel, for the benefit of ladies, Mma Makutsi assumed. But his mother was proud of him, as any mother would be of a son who was capable of bringing crowds to their feet.

When Mma Manapotsi was put on the line, they exchanged warm greetings before Mma Makutsi broached the subject of the typewriters. As she spoke, she stood on her toe under the desk, just for luck. They might have thrown the old typewriters out by now, or had them repaired and put back into service.

She explained that she was hoping to start a small typing class and that she would be prepared to pay for the rental of the typewriters, even if they did not work perfectly.

“But of course,” said Mma Manapotsi. “Why not? Those old machines are useless, and we need to clear the space. You could have them in exchange for …”

Mma Makutsi thought of her savings and imagined the savings book with a row of noughts in every column.

“For an offer to come and talk to the girls now and then,” went
on Mma Manapotsi. “I was thinking of introducing a new part of the curriculum. Talks from distinguished graduates on what to expect in the working world. You could be the first speaker.”

Mma Makutsi accepted the offer with alacrity.

“There are a dozen machines or so,” said Mma Manapotsi. “They don’t work properly, you know. They go qwertyui** rather than qwertyuiop. Some of them even go qop.”

“I don’t mind,” said Mma Makutsi. “They’re only for men.”

“Well, that’s all right then,” said Mma Manapotsi.

MMA MAKUTSI
replaced the receiver on its cradle and then rose from her desk. She glanced through the open door that led into the garage; nobody was watching. Slowly, she began to gyrate round the office in celebratory dance, ululating quietly as she did so, her right hand moving back and forward before her mouth. It was a victory dance. The Kalahari Typing School for Men had just been born; her first business, her very own idea. It would work—she had no doubt of that—and it would solve all her problems. The men would come flocking, all eager to learn the vital skill, and the money would flow into her account.

She adjusted her glasses, which had slipped down to the end of her nose during the dance, and looked out of the window. She could hardly wait to tell Mma Ramotswe all about it, as she knew that she would approve. Mma Ramotswe had Mma Makutsi’s real interests at heart—she knew that very well. It would be a relief to her to hear that her employee had come up with such a sound project for her spare time. This was exactly the spirit of enterprise which Mma Ramotswe had spoken about on a number of occasions. Enterprise with compassion. Those poor men, desperate to know how to type, but too ashamed to ask how to do it, had relief in store.