More About The Full Cupboard of Life

As you can see, I've found an ideal basket for The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series of books. Having finished reading The Full Cupboard of Life today, I 'll soon start In The Company of Cheerful Ladies (perched on top of the other books).

In a previous post, The Power of Books, I spoke about Mma Potokwane's desire to write a book about running an orphan farm. Here are a few more words about the subject:

"You must write that book, Mma,"urged Mma Ramotswe. "I would read it, even if I was not planning to run an orphan farm."
"Thank you,' said Mma Potokwane. "Maybe I shall do that one day. But at the moment I am so busy looking after all these orphans and making tea and baking fruit cake and all those things. There seems very little time for writing books."
"That is a pity," said Mma Makutsi.
~The Full Cupboard of Life, Alexander McCall Smith

These ladies echo the sentiments of Virginia Woolf.

Mma Potokwane has become a more central character by the fifth book in the series, The Full Cupboard of Life. Like Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, we know that when Mma Potokwane serves him special cakes, as she frequently does, he should be on his guard because she'll inevitably ask a big "favor" of him. It's difficult--if not impossible--for this very kind man to turn this very strong woman down, and her requests are often quite large.

I'm looking forward to reading the sixth book in this series by Alexander McCall Smith, and expect to soon find myself in the company of cheerful ladies.

Tea Talk

"Tea of course, made the problem seem smaller, as it always does, and by the time they reached the bottoms of their cups, and Mma Makutsi had reached for the slightly chipped tea-pot to pour a refill, it had become clear what they would have to do."
~The Full Cupboard of Life, Alexander McCall Smith

In the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books by Alexander McCall Smith, Mma Ramotswe and her assistant, Mma Makutsi, are always brewing, drinking, or thinking about African red bush tea, called rooibos. In fact, I first heard about these books from my sister-in-law, Britta, a couple of years ago, when I mentioned that I drank red tea, and she told me that she'd heard about it in these books. It took me a few years before I read my first The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency book, but now I'm hooked on the series. I'm also a tea drinker but drink mostly green, black, and oolong tea, although I have red tea occasionally . The general sense in these books is that tea helps with all matters, large and small, and there's much talk with tea as well as of tea. Here in The Full Cupboard of Life, Mma Ramotswe craves a mug of tea and tries to convey this to Mr. Bobologo:

"So I see,"said Mma Ramotswe. "And I see, too, that they have just made tea".
"It is better for them to drink tea than strong liquor," intoned Mr Bobolgo, looking disapprovingly at one of the girls, who cast her eyes downwards, in shame.
"Those are my view, too," said Mma Ramotswe."Tea refreshes. It clears the mind. Tea is good at any time of the day, but specially at mid-day, when it is so hot.' She paused, and then added, 'As it is today."
"You are right, Mma," said Mr Bobologo. "I am a great drinker of tea. I cannot understand why anybody would want to drink anything else when there is tea to be had. I have never been able to understand that."
~The Full Cupboard of Life, Alexander McCall Smith

Unfortunately, Mr Bobologo doesn't get the message, and Mma Ramotswe must go without the coveted cup of tea.

Later in the book, Mma Ramotswe asks herself what's important in her life--and comes up with a ubiquitous three letter word:

"Most people had something in their lives that was particularly important to them, and she supposed that the Botswana Secretarial college was as good a cause as any. What was it in her own case, she wondered? Tea?"
~The Full Cupboard of Life, Alexander McCall Smith

Tea comes to her mind (though she wishes she could think of something else). In these books, tea is nearly as important as any other character, and chapter eight is even titled, "Tea is Always the Solution". I often find myself craving a cup of tea as I read them.

Beautiful Botswana

It's difficult to write about The Full Cupboard of Life, or any book for that matter, without revealing too much of the plot. It's much better to read the book for yourself and see how events unfold. So, I'll write a few words instead about the beautiful country that intrigues me, the African nation of Botswana, as depicted in The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of books by Alexander McCall Smith. In The Full Cupboard of Life, the main character, the head detective herself, Mma Ramotswe, describes Botswana this way in her thoughts:

"There was a country so large that the land seemed to have no limits; there was a sky so wide and so free that the spirit could rise and soar and not feel in the least constrained; and there were the people, the quiet, patient people, who had survived in this land, and who loved it. Their tenacity was rewarded, because underneath the land there were diamonds, and the cattle prospered, and brick by brick the people built a country of which anybody could be proud. That was what Botswana had, and that's why it was a fortunate country."
~ The Full Cupboard of Life, Alexander McCall Smith

Mma Ramotswe's pride in her country is palpable and contagious; I picture the incredible expansiveness of both land and sky. I've included a map and flag of Botswana from (wonderful) Wikipedia; stunning photos of Botswana can be found on Technorati.

The Full Cupboard of Life: The Power of Books

I'm still enjoying The Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith, slowly but surely. For some reason, the book, which I ordered from an amazon marketplace seller, has the faint smell of garlic, as if it had been stored in a cupboard which housed some pungent bulbs. It doesn't really matter, and the book, a hardcover, is in beautiful condition. In The Full Cupboard of Life, Mma Potokane, the strong and clever manager of the "the orphan farm", has some positive thoughts about books:

"At the end of each term, those who had done well would receive a prize for their efforts; an atlas perhaps, or a Setswana Bible, or some other book which would be useful at school. Although she was not a great reader, Mma Potokwane was a firm believer in the power of books. The more books Botswana had, in her view, the better. It would be on books that the future would be based; books and the people who knew how to use them."
~The Full Cupboard of Life, Alexander McCall Smith

Fiction aside, there's a real problem with orphans in Africa, because of diseases, famine, and other problems, which leave children without parents to raise them. Mma Potokwane thinks that if she were to write a book, it would be an instructional manual on how to run an orphan farm, with practical advice about management, fund-raising, and child psychology. She's not sure that she's up to the task of writing a book, but if she did, she'd express "the old Botswana morality" by writing something that would help others.

Interestingly, I had a reader from Gaborone, Botswana--the setting for The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books--visit this blog a few days ago. This person was researching the importance of books!

The Botswana Book Project, established in 1998 by Pam Shelton, is helping to build libraries in beautiful Botswana.