The Colors of All the Cattle (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency #19)

by Alexander McCall Smith

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni heard this in silence. Then he sighed. It was not the first time that this had happened; this was what Mma Potokwane did—she decided for people, but did it in such a way that they thought they were making their own decisions. But they were not, and once they reflected on what had happened they often realised that they had ended up doing exactly as Mma Potokwane wanted them to do. He remembered, in particular, the occasion on which Mma Potokwane had enrolled people for a sponsored parachute jump in aid of the Orphan Farm. He himself had been one of those targeted—not as a sponsor, but as a jumper—and he had spent an unpleasant period of time in utter terror at the prospect. Then, on another occasion, Mma Ramotswe had been inveigled into baking two hundred scones for sale at an Orphan Farm fund-raising bazaar. When he heard about this, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had queried the figure of two hundred. Was Mma Ramotswe sure that she had not agreed to baking twenty scones? It was very easy to add a zero to any sum, and perhaps that had been done here. But no, it was two hundred, and Mma Ramotswe had spent an entire Sunday mixing the ingredients and sliding the baking trays into the oven. That was another case of what he now called the Potokwane effect, and here it was again.

The Potokwane Effect! Love it!