Summary
THE main problem about looking for the most famous woman in Botswana is that she doesn't exist. Beyond the imagination of Alexander McCall Smith and the five million people who have bought his novels, there really is no large-hearted private detective called Mma Ramotswe, no matter how we might yearn for such a palpably decent, kindly sorter-out of other people's problems.
At the foot of Kgale Hill, there is no No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. On Gabarone's bustling Twokleng Road, there is no Speedy Motors Garage, where Mr JLB Matekoni, fiction's most charming mechanic and Mma Ramotswe's adoring husband, plies his oily craft. Of course there isn't.See the full content of this document
Extract
Looking for Mma Ramotswe
And of course, you already know that there won't be, even as you fly into Gabarone airport with the fanciful aim of sleuthing out the "real" Mma Ramotswe. And when you drive from there to the centre of Botswana's capital, on roads thronged with gleaming flat-bed trucks, it seems even more of a fool's errand. Those miles of ultra-modern trading estates and offices marking out Africa's fastest-growing city; those long avenues of bungalows, their walls tipped with electrical fences; that shopping mall across the road, with shoppers pouring into the hi-fi shops, edging past luxury sports cars and fashion shows, its cinema showing the same films as are on right now in Scotland. Everything you see tells you you're wasting your time: Mma Ramotswe couldn't possibly live in a place as thoroughly westernised, as relentlessly up-to-the-minute as this.
Wrong....See the full content of this document
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