EXTRACT | ‘The Great Hippopotamus Hotel’ by Alexander McCall Smith
Read the first chapter of the 25th title in the multi-million copy bestselling and perennially adored No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series

ABOUT THE BOOK
A chance meeting with the manager of The Great Hippopotamus Hotel leads the much-admired and traditionally-built Precious Ramotswe to investigate what is going wrong with this previously successful country hotel.
Guests have been unwell, clothing has disappeared from the washing line, and scorpions have found their way into the guest bedrooms.
Mma Ramotswe drives out to the hotel with her irrepressible colleague, Grace Makutsi. What they find there are family conflicts that only the investigators of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency will be able to resolve.
Meanwhile, Mma Ramotswe's husband, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, gets a visit from a middle-aged client who wants to purchase a fast Italian sports car. What should the conscientious garagiste do in such circumstances? Should the client's wife be told?
EXTRACT
Chapter One
Life is like peri-peri chicken
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 had only 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’s a reason why it isn’t. Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi had 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 worthy 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 ever 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 might 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 nonexecutive director of the Double Comfort Furniture Store, 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. That has happened in some places 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.’
‘There was that sign near Lobatse,’ Phuti said. ‘I pointed it out to you, Mma. Remember?’
Mma Makutsi did remember.
‘We saw it every time we went down there,’ she said, smiling at the memory. ‘But when we looked for a project, there was nothing to be seen – just empty bush and some goats nibbling at the thorn bushes.’
‘Perhaps the goats were the project,’ suggested Phuti Radiphuti.
She shook her head. ‘No, Rra, I don’t think so. I believe that the people who were behind the project forgot about it, or went away and couldn’t find anybody to take it over. And then the ants started to eat the sign and it began to look shakier and shakier.’
‘It is good that we have Mr Lebogang Motsumi,’ mused Phuti. ‘He is a real asset to the community.’
Mma Makutsi agreed. She had taken no persuading to be a member of his advisory panel but had never been at all sure what its function was. There had been three meetings so far, each of them held in the living room of Mr Motsumi’s house, and the panel members had all gone away at the end of the meetings feeling replete, even if confused as to why they were there. There is a tradition in Botswana that no function is complete without the consumption of food, and the meeting at the Motsumi house had more than honoured this custom. Mma Motsumi, a cheerful, traditionally built lady, had surpassed herself in her baking efforts for the occasion, and the six members of the panel had all eaten far too many of her savoury scones and cheese straws, along with numerous slices of her double-chocolate cake, to feel comfortable when it came to the business of the meeting. It quickly became apparent to Mr Motsumi, who was occupying the chair, that there was no heart for business, which did not matter too much, as it happened, because there was little of substance on the agenda. Nobody had asked for any advice apart from the university, which had requested the community’s views on the possible construction of a residential building for students one block away from a road of large prosperous-looking houses.
‘We do not want any students round here,’ said one of the members. ‘They are always making a noise.’
‘And they drink all the time,’ said another. ‘They have very little time to study, with all the parties they have.’
‘They are studying for a Bachelor of Parties degree,’ suggested a third member. ‘That is a very popular degree these days, I think.’
Even the mild Mr Lebogang Motsumi expressed misgivings about the proposal. ‘Students should go away,’ he said – a comment that brought a general nodding of heads.
And that was all the discussion there was, although the tenor of the views expressed by the members was treated by Mr Lebogang Motsumi as justification for a stiff letter to the university saying that the community had been widely consulted and was of the unanimous view that the area was completely unsuitable for student accommodation.
Extract courtesy of Little Brown Book Group. This book is distributed by Jonathan Ball Publishers and is available from all good bookstores.
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