September 2024

The following is an extract from Alexander’s latest novel in the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, The Great Hippopotamus Hotel.

Mma Ramotswe had always understood that people who are one thing may at the same time be another. This insight, although not entirely original, is undoubtedly quite true. Embodying more than one identity is part of being human – and one of the things of which we might be justifiably proud. It would be a dull world, indeed, in which we all only had one role to play, and were unable to choose from time to time to be something different. Life, said Mma Ramotswe, is a bit like peri-peri chicken: it is improved with a pinch of spice – but only within reason, of course. Much as she enjoyed hot dishes, she would certainly not want to eat them every day.

And the same was true of Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, for whom a helping of the spicy Portuguese dish was a treat he could take only about once a month or so, given the delicacy of his stomach. Plain food was what he wanted, and was what Mma Ramotswe provided for him, with her boiled pumpkin, her Botswana beef stew, and the popular fried doughnuts known locally as fat cakes. If her friend Mma Potokwani, redoubtable matron of the Orphan Farm, was widely known for her fruit cake, then Mma Ramotswe enjoyed a similar reputation for her fat cakes, once described by Mma Makutsi as the most delicious fat cakes in all Botswana.

Identity, though, was a fascinating subject, once one came to look at the people one knew. Take Mma Makutsi, for instance, currently sitting at her desk in the office of the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency: she could be described in a number of ways. First and foremost, she was Grace Makutsi from Bobonong, a village up in the north of Botswana, a not-particularly-exciting place from which one might not expect all that many remarkable people to emerge. That is not to be dismissive of Bobonong, which, like everywhere, has its finer points – it is simply to be realistic as to what we might expect from a place quite so off the beaten track. The beaten track, after all, is beaten for a reason, as is made clear in The Principles of Private Detection, the book from which both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi had received so much guidance. Remember, wrote Clovis Andersen, that what’s out there is out there for a reason. And if it isn’t out there, then once again there is a reason why it isn’t. Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi has discussed that particular observation at some length, and were confident that they had reached an understanding of its meaning, or had at least begun to do so.

Had Mma Makutsi stayed in Bobonong, of course, she might have remained simply Mma Makutsi from Bobonong. In all likelihood she would have married a local man – a schoolteacher, perhaps, or a minor government official – and gone on to live a worth even if entirely local life. But greater things were in store, and by dint of hard work and parsimony, she went on to become Grace Makutsi, graduate summa cum laude of the Botswana Secretarial College. She was indeed that, but, most importantly, she was also the graduate with the highest mark ever achieved in the final examinations of that distinguished institution – ninety-seven per cent. Of course, there were those who claimed that a more recent candidate had achieved an even higher mark, but no hard evidence had been produced to back up that claim. And even if such evidence were to materialise, it would not weaken Mma Makutsi’s status as the holder of the highest mark at the time at which she graduated. Old records may be broken by subsequent achievements, but they remained records at the time at which they were chalked up, and could still be considered records even after they had fallen. Glories accrued through diligent study or hard work should not be taken away from those who have achieved them – they remained in memory, their glow increasing with the passage of time.

But there was more. Mma Makutsi was also a wife, a mother, a private detective, an authority on fashionable shoes, a non-executive director of the Double Comfort Furniture, and a member of a community advisory panel established by their neighbour, Mr Lebogang Motsumi. Lebogang meant in Setswana ‘be thankful’, a benign name that certainly suited the mild and affable nature of Mr Motsumi, who was generally viewed by his neighbours as a model citizen.

‘Every community needs somebody who will take on the jobs that need to be done,’ Mma Makutsi observed to her husband, Mr Phuti Radiphuti. ‘There has to be somebody who is prepared to step forward.’

‘You’re right, Grace,’ said Phuti. ‘Otherwise, things go to the dogs. This has happened in some placed where nobody will take on any of these jobs that have to be done.’

‘There are many people who look over their shoulder when they are asked to help out,’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘They look for somebody who is standing behind them. Then they point to that person and say, “He will be the one to do this thing.” That is what happens, I think, Phuti.’

Phuti thought about this and remembered the sign that he had seen by a roadside down near Lobatse. The sign was a large one, the lettering stencilled in black against the light blue that was Botswana’s national colour. It proclaimed: ‘This improvement project is supported by the Lobatse Improvement Committee.’ And underneath that, as a message in smaller letters: ‘Look the future in the face with us.’

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The Great Hippopotamus Hotel is available from 15th October.