Free Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith

you.
    “As I told you, I have a hotel down in Lobatse. This has done quite well—it is a good place for weddings—and I have used the money I made from it to buy land. I bought land down near the border with Namibia, right down there. It takes me four hours’ driving from Lobatse to get there, and so I can’t go down every week. I have a man, though, who looks after it for me, and there are some families who live on the land and do work for me.”
    “And this man, is he good with cattle? That is very important,” said Mma Ramotswe.
    “Yes, he is good with cattle. But he is also good with ostriches. I have a good flock of ostriches down there and some fine birds. Big ones. Strong. It’s a good place for ostriches.”
    Mma Ramotswe did not know about ostriches. She had seen them, of course, and she knew that many people were keen on them. But in her mind, they were a poor substitute for cattle. She imagined a Botswana covered with ostriches rather than cattle. What a strange place that would be; undignified, really.
    “My ostriches are well known for their good meat,” Mr. Molefelo went on. “But they are also good breeders. I have one who is rvery kind to the hens and has many children. He is a very fineostrich, and I keep him in a special paddock so that he does not fight. I have seen him kick, you know. Ow! If he kicked a man, he would divide him in two. I’m not exaggerating. Two pieces. Down the middle.”
    “I shall be very careful,” said Mma Ramotswe.
    “I saw a man kicked by an ostrich once. He was the brother of one of the men who works on my farm, and he was not very strong. A long time ago, when he was a child, he was trodden upon by some cattle and hurt his back. He did not grow up straight, because his spine was twisted. So he could not do much work. Then he got TB, and that made him even worse. All that coughing, I suppose, makes you very weak.
    “He came to see his brother one day, and they gave him some beer, although this weak man was not used to drinking. He liked the beer, and it made him feel brave for once in his life. So he went over to the ostrich pen and climbed over the tall fence that we use to keep the ostriches in. There was an ostrich nearby who was watching him, and he was very surprised when a man ran up to him waving his arms. The ostrich tried to run away, but he caught his wing in the fence and was slow. So the man caught him, and that was when the ostrich kicked him.
    “I had heard all this shouting when the man climbed over the fence, and I came to see what was happening. I saw him trying to seize the ostrich’s tail feathers, and then I saw him going up in the air and landing down with a thump. He never got up, but lay there while the ostrich looked at him. And that was the end of that man.”
    Mma Ramotswe looked down at the ground, thinking of this poor man with his twisted spine. “I am sorry to hear about that man,” she said. “There are many sad things that happen, and sometimes we do not hear about them. All the time, there are these sad things that God sends Africa.”
    “Yes,” said Mr. Molefelo. “You are right, Mma. The world is very cruel to us sometimes.”
    They walked on a few paces, thinking about what Mma Ramotswe had said. Then Mr. Molefelo continued. “I must now tell you what happened to me just a few months ago. This is not just a story that I am telling you; it is so that you can understand why I have come to see you.
    “I went down to my farm with my wife and my two sons. They are strong boys—one is this high and one is this high.” He gestured with the palm of his hand held upwards; it was never a good idea to show the height of a person with the palm facing downwards, as this could push the spirit down. “We were going to stay there for a week, but something happened on the second night which changed that. Some men came to the farm from over the border. They came at night, riding on their horses. They were ostrich rustlers.”
    Mma