Precious and the Monkeys

  This edition first published in 2011 by

  Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

  West Newington House

  10 Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.polygonbooks.co.uk

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978-1-84697-204-1

  eBook ISBN 978-0-85790-068-5

  First published in the Scots language in 2010

  by Itchy Coo

  Text copyright © Alexander McCall Smith 2011

  Illustration © Iain McIntosh 2010, 2011

  The rights of the copyright holders have been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

  system, or transmitted in any form, or by any

  means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

  recording or otherwise, without permission in

  writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  on request from the British Library

  Printed and bound in Italy by

  Grafica Veneta S.P.A.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  A Map of Botswana

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  number of years ago I went to live for a short time in a country called Botswana. This is a very beautiful country in Africa – a place famous for its great wild places and the animals that live in them. When I lived there, I remember thinking: it would be fun to write about this place some day.

  And I did. A long time afterwards, I sat down one day and wrote a story about a lady called Precious Ramotswe, who lives in Botswana, and who starts a little business. People thought that she might start a small store or something like that, but instead she sets up a detective agency. A detective agency! What does she know about being a detective? The answer to that is nothing, but – and this is an important but – she has just the right talents for it. She is a born detective – which means that she is somebody who is naturally good at the work involved in being a detective.

  She is not one of those police detectives who solve major crimes. No, she is a person who deals with the mysteries that ordinary people – just like you and me – may have in their lives. So if we think that somebody is not telling us the truth about something, then we may go to her and ask her to find out what is really going on. Or if we have lost something that is very important to us, we may ask her to find it. Such people are called private detectives.

  I have now written quite a number of books about Precious Ramotswe and from time to time, people have asked me more about her life. One of the questions I have been asked is this: what was Precious like as a girl? That is what this book is about.

  Although there is no actual Precious Ramotswe in real life, I can promise you that there are plenty of girls and women in Botswana who are just like her. I have met lots of ladies – and girls too – in that country who are every bit as intelligent and kind and nice as Precious Ramotswe is. And Botswana is real, as is the village of Mochudi, which is where she lives. So yes, it could be true – she really could exist.

  That’s enough from me. Now listen to the story. Think of Africa. Think of a girl living there. Think of what it would be like to discover, when you are still quite young, that you are a born detective …

  ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

  AVE YOU EVER SAID TO YOURSELF – not out loud, of course, but silently, just in your head: Wouldn’t it be nice to be a detective? I have, and so have a lot of other people, although most of us will never have the chance to make our dream come true. Detectives, you see, are born that way. Right from the beginning, they just know that this is what they want to be. And right from the beginning, even when they are very young – a lot younger than you – they show that solving mysteries is something they can do rather well.

  This is the story of a girl who became a detective. Her first name was Precious, and her second name was Ramotswe.

  That is an African name, and it is not as hard to say it as it looks. You just say RAM and then you say OTS (like lots without the l) and then you finish it off by saying WE. That’s it.

  This is a picture of Precious when she was about seven. She is smiling because she was thinking at the time of something funny, although she often smiled even when she was not thinking about anything in particular. Nice people smile a lot, and Precious Ramotswe was one of the nicest girls in Botswana. Everyone said that.

  Botswana was the country she lived in. It was down towards the bottom of Africa, right in the middle. This meant that it was very far from the sea. Precious had never seen the sea, although she had heard people talk about it.

  “The sound of the waves is like the sound of a high wind in the branches of the trees,” people said. “It’s like that sound, but it never stops.”

  She would have loved to stand beside the sea, and to let the waves wash over her toes, but it was too far away for her wish to be granted. So she had to content herself with the wide dry land that she lived in, which had a lot of amazing things to see anyway.

  There was the Kalahari Desert, a great stretch of dry grass and thorn trees that went on and on into the distance, further than any eye can see. Then there was the great river in the north, which flowed the wrong way, not into the ocean, as rivers usually do, but back into the heart of Africa. When it reached the sands of the Kalahari, it drained away, just like water disappears down the plughole of a bath.

  But most exciting, of course, were the wild animals. There were many of these in Botswana: lions, elephants, leopards, ostriches, monkeys – the list goes on and on. Precious had not seen all of these animals, but she had heard about most of them. Her father, a kind man whose name was Obed, had often spoken about them, and she loved the tales he told.

  “Tell me about the time you were nearly eaten by a lion,” she would ask. And Obed, who had told her that story perhaps a hundred times before, would tell her again. And it was every bit as exciting each time he told it.

  “I was quite young then,” he began.

  “How young?” asked Precious.

  “About eighteen, I think,” he said. “It was just before I went off to work in the gold mines. I went up north to see my uncle, who lived way out in the bush, very far from everywhere.”

  “Did anybody else live there?” asked Precious. She was always asking questions, which was a sign that she might become a detective later on. Many people who ask lots of questions become detectives, because that is what detectives have to do.

  “It was a very small village,” said Obed. “It was just a few huts, really, and a fenced place where they kept the cattle. They had this fence, you see, which protected the cattle from the lions at night.”

  As you can imagine, this fence had to be quite strong. You cannot keep lions out with a fence that is no more than a few strands of wire. That is hopeless when it comes to lions – they would just knock down such a fence with a single blow of their paw. A proper lion fence has to be made of strong poles, from the trunks of trees, just like this:

  That is a good, solid lion fence.

  “So there I was,” Obed went on. “I had gone to spend a few days with my uncle and his family. They were good to me and I enjoyed being with my cousins, whom I had not seen for a long time. There were six of them �
�� four boys and two girls. We had many adventures together.

  “I slept in one of the huts with three of the boys. We did not have proper beds in those days – we had sleeping mats, made out of reeds, which we laid out on the floor of the hut. They were very comfortable, even if it doesn’t sound like it, and they were much cooler than a bed and blankets in the hot weather, and easier to store too.”

  Precious was quiet now. This was the part of the story that she was waiting for.

  “And then,” her father continued, “and then one night I woke up to hear a strange sound outside. It was a sort of grunting sound, a little bit like the sound a large pig will make when it’s sniffing about for food, only deeper.”

  “Did you know what it was?” she asked, holding her breath as she waited for her father to reply. She knew what the answer would be, of course, as she had heard the story so many times, but it was always exciting, always enough to keep you sitting on the very edge of your seat.

  He shook his head. “No, I didn’t. And that was why I thought I should go outside and find out.”

  Precious closed her eyes tight, just like this.

  She could hardly bear to hear what was coming.

  “It was a lion,” said her father. “And he was right outside the hut, standing there, looking at me in the night from underneath his great, dark mane.”

  Like this.

  Precious opened her eyes cautiously, one at a time, just in case there was a lion in the room. But there was just her father, telling his story.

  “How did that lion get in?” she asked. “How did he get past that big strong fence?”

  Obed shook his head. “I later found out that somebody had not fastened the gate properly,” he said. “It was carelessness.”

  But enough of that. It was time to get on with the story of what happened next.

  HAT WOULD YOU DO if you found yourself face to face with a great lion? Stand perfectly still? Turn on your heels and run? Creep quietly away? Perhaps you would just close your eyes and hope that you were dreaming – which is what Obed did at first when he saw the terrifying lion staring straight at him. But when he opened his eyes again, the lion was still there, and worse still, was beginning to open his great mouth.

  Precious caught her breath. “Did you see his teeth?” she asked.

  Obed nodded. “The moonlight was very bright,” he said. “His teeth were white and as sharp as great needles.”

  Precious shuddered at the thought, and listened intently as her father explained what happened next.

  Obed moved his head very slowly – not enough to alarm the lion, but just enough for him to look for escape routes. He could not get back to the hut, he thought, as it would take him too close to the frightening beast. Off to his left, though, just a few paces away, were the family’s grain bins. These were large bins, rather like garden pots – but much bigger – that were used for storing the maize that the family grew for their food. They were made out of pressed mud, baked hard by the hot sun, and were very strong.

  Obed lowered his voice. “I looked up at the night sky and thought, I’ll never see the sun again. And then I looked down at the ground and thought, I’ll never feel my beloved Botswana under my feet again. But the next thing I said to myself was, No, I must do something. I must not let this lion eat me!

  “I made up my mind and ran – not back to the hut, but to the nearest grain bin. I pushed the cover back and jumped in, bringing the lid down on top of my head. I was safe!”

  Precious breathed a sigh of relief. But she knew that there was more to come.

  “There was very little grain left in that bin,” Obed went on. “There were just a few husks and dusty bits. So there was plenty of room for me to crouch down.”

  “And spiders too?” asked Precious, with a shudder.

  “There are always spiders in grain bins,” said Obed. “But it wasn’t spiders I was worried about.”

  “It was …”

  Obed finished the sentence for her. “Yes, it was the lion. He had been a bit surprised when I jumped into the bin, and now I could hear him outside, scratching and snuffling at the lid.

  “I knew that it would only be a matter of time before he pushed the lid off with one of his great paws, and I knew that I had to do something. But what could I do?”

  Precious knew the answer. “You could take some of the dusty bits and pieces from the bottom of the bin and …”

  Obed laughed. “Exactly. And that’s what I did. I took a handful of those dusty husks and then, pushing up the lid a tiny bit, I tossed them straight into the face of the inquisitive lion.”

  Precious looked at her father wide-eyed. She knew that this was the good part of the story.

  “And what did he do?” she asked.

  Obed smiled. “He was very surprised,” he said. “He breathed them in and then he gave the loudest, most amazing, most powerful sneeze that has ever been sneezed in Botswana, or possibly in all Africa. Ka… chow! Like this.

  “It was a very great sneeze,” Obed said. “It was a sneeze that was heard from miles away, and it was certainly heard by everybody in the village. In every hut, people awoke, rubbed their eyes, and rose from their sleeping mats. ‘A great lion has sneezed,’ they said to one another. ‘We must all hit our pots and pans as hard as we can. That will frighten him away.’ ”

  And that is what happened. As the people began to strike their pots and pans with spoons and forks and anything else that came to hand, the lion tucked his tail between his legs and ran off into the bush. He was not frightened of eating one unfortunate young man, but even he could not stand up to a whole village of people all making a terrible din. Lions do not usually like that sort of thing, and this one certainly did not.

  “I am glad that you were not eaten by that lion,” said Precious.

  “And so am I,” said Obed.

  “Because if the lion had eaten you, I would never have been born,” Precious said.

  “And if you had never been born, then I would never have been able to get to know the brightest and nicest girl in all Botswana,” said her father.

  Precious thought for a moment. “So it would have been a bad thing for both of us,” she said at last.

  “Yes,” said Obed. “And maybe a bad thing for the lion too.”

  “Oh, why was that?”

  “Because I might have given him indigestion,” said Obed. “It’s a well-known fact that if a lion eats a person who’s feeling cross at the time, he gets indigestion.”

  Precious looked at her father suspiciously. She was not sure whether this was true, or whether he was just making it up to amuse her. She decided that it was not true, and told him so.

  He smiled, and looked at her in a curious way. “You can tell when people are making things up, can’t you?”

  Precious nodded. She thought that was probably right – she could tell.

  “Perhaps you should become a detective one day,” he said.

  And that was how the idea of becoming a detective was first planted in the mind of Precious Ramotswe, who was still only seven, but who was about to embark on a career as Botswana’s greatest detective!

  ETECTIVES sometimes say to one another: it’s your first case that’s always the hardest. Well, Precious was never sure if that was true for her, but her first case was certainly not easy.

  It happened not long after her father had told her that one day she might become a detective. When he said that, she had at first thought What a strange idea, but then she asked herself, Why not? That’s often what you think after somebody makes an odd suggestion. Why not? And after you’ve asked that question, you think Well, yes! And then you decide that there really is no reason why you shouldn’t do it.

  Not always, of course. If somebody suggests something stupid, or unkind, then you should quickly see all the reasons why not. And then you say, No thank you! Or Certainly not! Or something of that sort.

  But Precious said to herself, “Yes, I could be a detective.
But surely it will be years and years before I get a case.”

  She was wrong about that. A case came up sooner than she thought. This is what happened.

  The school Precious went to was on a hill. This meant that children had quite a climb in the mornings, but once they were up there, what a wonderful place it was for their lessons. Looking out of the windows, they could gaze out to where other little hills popped up like islands in the sea. And you could hear sounds from far away too – the tinkling of cattle bells, the rumbling of thunder in the distance, the cry of a bird of prey soaring in the wind.

  It was, as you can imagine, a very happy school. The teachers were happy to be working in such a nice town, the children were happy to have kind teachers who did not shout at them too much, and even the school cat, who had a comfortable den outside, was happy with the mice that could be chased most days.

  But then something nasty happened. That is what the world is sometimes like: everything seems fine, and then something happens to spoil things.

  What happened was that there was a thief. Now, most people don’t steal things. Most people – and that certainly includes you and me – know that things that belong to other people belong to other people. For many of us, that is Rule Number One, and sometimes you see it written out like this:

  And Rule Number Two? Well that’s another matter altogether, and we all know what it is anyway. So, a thief … and a thief at school too!

  The first person to notice what was going on was Tapiwa (TAP-EE-WAH) a girl in the same class as Precious.

  “Do you know what?” she whispered to Precious as they made their way home after school one afternoon.

  “No,” said Precious. “What?”

  “There must be a thief at school,” said Tapiwa, looking over her shoulder in case anybody heard what she had to say. “I brought a piece of cake to school with me this morning. I left it in my bag in the corridor outside the classroom.” She paused before she went on. “I was really looking forward to eating it at break-time.”