All those years ago
Ne zaboravljamo, pomislila je Mma Ramotswe. Naše
glave možda i jesu male, ali su pune sjećanja, kao što je
nebo ponekad puno rojeva pčela; Na tisuće sjećanja,
mirisa, mjesta, malih stvari koje su nam se dogodile i koje
se vraćaju, neočekivano, da nas sjete tko smo mi. A tko
sam ja? Ja sam Precious Ramotswe, građanka Bocvane, kći
Obeda Ramotswea, koji je umro jer je bio rudar i više nije
mogao disati. Njegov život je ostao nezabilježen; tko to
piše o životima običnih ljudi?
10 Ja sam Obed Ramotswe i rođen sam blizu Mahalapyea
1930. godine. Mahalapye je na pola puta između
Gaboronea i Francistowna, na cesti koja izgleda kao da joj
nema kraja. U to vrijeme to je bila zemljana cesta,
naravno, a željeznička pruga bila je mnogo važnija. Pruga
se pružala od Bulawaya, prelazila u Bocvanu kod
Plumtreea, a zatim išla prema jugu uzduž zemlje sve do listened to my chest. He could tell that I had been a miner, seoeid
Mafikenga, na drugoj strani. just by listening, and he shook his head and said that the
mines have many different ways of hurting a man. As he
Kao dječak, gledao sam vlakove dok su pristizali na
spoke, I remembered
kolosijek. Ispuštali su velike oblake pare, a mi bismo jedni
so a song the Sotho miners used to sing. They sang: 'The
druge izazivali da se im se što više približimo u trku. Ložač
mines eat men. Even when you have left them, the mines
bi vikao na nas, a šef stanice bi puhao u svoju zviždaljku,
may still be eating you.' We all knew this was true. You
ali nikad
could be killed by falling rock or you could be killed years
20 nas nisu se nisu uspjeli otarasiti. Skrili bismo se iza biljaka i
later, when underground was just a memory, or even a
kutija, pa bismo izletjeli i prosili novčiće od zatvorenih bad dream that visited you at night. The mines
prozora vlakova. Vidjeli smo kako bijeli ljudi gledaju kroz ss would come back for their payment, just as they were
svoje prozore, kao duhovi, a ponekad bi nam bacili pokoji coming back for me now. So I was not surprised by what
svoj rodezijski peni – veliki bakreni novčić s rupom u Dr Moffat said. Some people cannot bear news like that.
sredini – ili, ako bismo imali sreće, mali srebrni novčić koji They think they must live forever, and they cry and wail
smo zvali "tickey", a kojim se moglo kupiti malu limenku when they realize that their time is coming. I do not feel
sirupa. like that, and I do not weep at the
60 news the doctor gave me. The only thing that makes me
Mahalapye was a straggling village of huts made of
sad is that I shall be leaving Africa when I die. I love
brown, sunbaked mud bricks and a few tin-roofed
Africa, which is my mother and my father. When I am dead
buildings. These belonged
I shall miss the smell of Africa, because they say that
30 to the Government or the Railways, and they seemed to us where you go, wherever that may be, there is no smell or
to represent distant, unattainable luxury. There was a taste.
school run by an old Anglican priest and a white woman
whose face had been half-destroyed by the sun. They 65 But I can look back over my sixty years and think of
everything
both spoke Setswana, which was unusual, but they taught
that I have seen and of how I started with nothing and ended
us in English, insisting on the pain of a
up with almost two hundred cattle. And I have a good
35 thrashing that we left our own language outside in the daughter, a loyal daughter, who looks after me well and
playground.
makes me tea while I sit here in the sun and look out to
On the other side of the road was the beginning of the the hills in the distance. When
plain that stretched out into the Kalahari. It was a
70 you see the hills from a distance, they are blue; as all the
featureless land, cluttered with low thorn trees, on the
distances
branches of which there perched the hornbills and the
in the country are. We are far from the sea here, with
fluttering molopes, with their long
Angola and
40 trailing tail-feathers. It was a world that seemed to have
Namibia between us and the coast, and yet we have this
no end, and that, I think, is what made Africa in those
great
days so different. There was no end to it. A man could
empty ocean of blue above and around us. No sailor could
walk, or ride, forever, and he would never get anywhere. be
I am sixty now, and I do not think God wants me to live lonelier than a man standing in the middle of our land,
much 45 longer. Perhaps there will be a few years more, but 1 with miles
doubt it; 75 and miles of blue about him.
From The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall
I saw Dr Moffat at the Dutch Reformed Hospital in Mochudi who
Smith
13
