Between sips of tea and meditations on morality, fleeting happiness is achieved via a pair of blue shoes.
Quotes:
It was better, she thought, to be a little bit bad in this life, and not too perfect.
“Keep your mouth shut,” he had written in The Principles of Private Detection. “Keep your mouth shut at all times, but at the same time encourage others to do precisely the opposite.”
Most problems could be diminished by the drinking of tea and the thinking through of things that could be done while tea was being drunk. And even if that did not solve problems, at least it could put them off for a little while, which we sometimes needed to do, we really did.
“Anybody can lose,” cautioned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. “You need to remember that every time you win.” He thought of adding, and anybody can cry, even a man, but knew that this would be wasted on the apprentices.
I am a girl from Bobonong, she said to herself. I am a girl from Bobonong, with glasses. There was a man who was going to marry me, a kind man, but I frightened him away through my foolish talk. Now I am alone again. That is the story of my life; that is the story of Grace Makutsi.
Of course one could judge others, and Mma Ramotswe used the standards of the old Botswana morality to make these judgements. But there was nothing in the old Botswana morality which said that one could not forgive those who were weak; indeed, there was much in the old Botswana morality that was very specifically about forgiveness. One should not hold a grudge against another, it said, because to harbour grudges was to disturb the social peace, the bond between people.
And of course it was always difficult for Mma Ramotswe not to feel sympathy for another, however objectionable his conduct might be, however flawed his character, simply because she understood, at the most intuitive, profound level what it was to be a human being, which is not easy. Everybody, she felt, could do evil, so easily; could be weak, so easily; could be selfish, so easily.
The problem was that she had not been to the Botswana Secretarial College, where the motto, proudly displayed above the front entrance to the college, was Be Accurate. Unfortunately, there was a spelling mistake, and the motto read Be Acurate. Mma Makutsi had spotted this and had pointed it out to the college, but nothing had been done about it so far.
If I ever see God, she thought, I am sure that he will not be thin.
Evil, she thought. That is what I see. Evil. She had seen it only once or twice in her life, and on each occasion she had known it. Most human failings were no more than that—failings—but evil went beyond that.
Mma Ramotswe sat back in her chair. She put the pencil down. And she thought, How might I think if I were in this woman’s shoes? How do you think if you are so heartless as to blackmail those who are frightened and guilty? And the answer that came back to her was this: hate. Somewhere some wrong had been done, a wrong connected with who she was perhaps, a wrong which turned her to despair and to hate. And hate had made it possible for her to do all this.
