Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni explained how he had only heard the story second-hand, and that sometimes these stories tended to be exaggerated in the re-telling. But he had been told that the girl who worked in the grandmother’s kitchen had seen the snake watching her through a small hole in the floor and, panicking, had fetched the grandmother. After that, every sound the grandmother heard—and an old house is full of sounds—she imagined was the sound of the mamba moving around beneath her feet. It was not long, then, before she begged her grandson to find her a new house. This new house was some way
Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni explained how he had only heard the story second-hand, and that sometimes these stories tended to be exaggerated in the re-telling. But he had been told that the girl who worked in the grandmother’s kitchen had seen the snake watching her through a small hole in the floor and, panicking, had fetched the grandmother. After that, every sound the grandmother heard—and an old house is full of sounds—she imagined was the sound of the mamba moving around beneath her feet. It was not long, then, before she begged her grandson to find her a new house. This new house was some way out of town, and much smaller and cheaper than the one she had been living in. There had been no cash adjustment, said Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni; the grandson had pocketed the profits he made when he knocked the old house down and erected a new one. “And the snake?” asked Mma Ramotswe. “What would you like the answer to be, Mma?” She thought for a moment. “I would like to hear that it moved out of the old house when the bulldozers came to knock the house down. I would like to be told that it ran off and searched for another place to live. I would like to hear that the first house it came to was the grandson’s, and that it moved in there, under his bed perhaps, or just behind the laundry basket in the bathroom.” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni laughed. “And bit him?” “No,” said Mma Ramotswe. “I would not wish that on anyone—even on a man who knocks down his own grandmother’s house. Just frightened, Rra. B...
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We all want to hear of a little justice happening so we feel that things are proceeding as they should. I too, have a few people I would like to hear got a dose of what they’d been putting out over the years.
