The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one's own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh at such simplicity, but, she asked herself, what was their own solution?

The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, they feel; such a miracle.

And if there's bad behaviour," Mma Potokwane went on. "If there's bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love. That always works, you know. People say we must punish when there is wrongdoing, but if you punish you're only punishing yourself. And what's the point of that?

Great feuds often need very few words to resolve them. Disputes, even between nations, between peoples, can be set to rest with simple acts of contrition and corresponding forgiveness, can so often be shown to be based on nothing much other than pride and misunderstanding, and the forgetting of the humanity of the other—and land, of course.

There were some people, it seemed, who were incapable of being pleasant about anything. Of course, the cars that such people drove tended to be difficult as well. Nice cars have nice drivers; bad cars have bad drivers. A person's gearbox revealed everything that you could want to know about that person, thought Mr J.L.B. Matekoni.

It was time for tea as it so often was.

The world, Mma Ramotswe believed, was composed of big things and small things. The big things were written large, and one could not but be aware of them—wars, oppression, the familiar theft by the rich and the strong of those simple things that the poor needed, those scraps which would make their life more bearable; this happened, and could make even the reading of a newspaper an exercise in sorrow. There were all those unkindnesses, palpable, daily, so easily avoidable; but one could not think just of those, thought Mma Ramotswe, or one would spend one's time in tears—and the unkindnesses would continue. So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one's own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter.

I cannot see myself in a new car. I am a tiny white van person. That is what i want!

He would sit down and consider the situation carefully. Not only did this help to identify the solution to the problem, but it also gave him the opportunity to remind himself that things were not really as bad as they seemed; it was all a question of perspective. Sitting down and looking up at the sky for a few minutes--not at any particular part of the sky, but just at the sky in general--at the vast, dizzying, empty sky of Botswana, cut human problems down to size.

Perhaps trust had to be accompanied by a measure of common sense, and a hefty dose of realism about human nature. But that would need a lot of thinking about, and the tea break did not go on forever.

But we cannot always choose whose lives will become entangled with our own; these things happen to us, come to us uninvited, and Mma Ramotswe understood that well.

In fact, Mma Ramotswe, that’s really all that a child needs to know—to know that it is loved. That is all.

It is so easy to thank people,” said Mma Ramotswe, passing the letter over to Mma Makutsi. “And most people don’t bother to do it. They don’t thank the person who does something for them. They just take it for granted.

Everybody forgave one another and started again, which, Mma Ramotswe reflected, is how many of the world’s problems might be solved. We should forgive one another and start all over again.

He could have fumed about those, but did not. What was the point? he thought. Some things just are.

...we all have some things we are ashamed of.

But then she reminded herself that there were plenty of people who were afraid of the police, even if they had clear consciences. These were people who had been the victims of bullying when young--bullying by severe teachers, by stronger children; there were so many ways in which people could be crushed. Such people might feat the police in the same way in which they feared all authority.

...a prison of put-downs and belittlements.

She wanted everything back, as we do sometimes in our irrationality and regret; we want it all back.

she found herself looking down on the top of Teenie's head; at a small woollen bobble, in fact, which topped a curious tea-cosy style knitted cap which she was wearing. She looked more closely at it, wondering if she could make out an opening through which a tea pot spout might project; she could not see an opening, but there was a very similar tea cosy in the office, she remembered, and perhaps she or Mma Ramotswe might wear it on really cold days. She imagined how Mma Ramotswe would look in a tea cosy and decided that she would probably look rather good: it might add to her authority, perhaps, in some indefinable way.

your mind like that, then you kept it in good order for a longer period of time, and you put off the day when you would be sitting in the sun, like some of the very old people, not exactly sure which day of the week it was and wondering why the world no longer made the sense that it once did. Yet such people were often happy, he reminded himself, possibly because it did not really matter what day of the week it was anyway.

You are innocent in your heart,” she had said to him. “That is the most important thing.” And he had thought about that for a few moments before shaking his head and saying, “I would like that to be true, Mma, but it is not. It is what other people think. That is the most important thing.

It is so easy to thank people," said Mma Ramotswe, passing the letter over to Mma Makutsi, "and most people don't bother to do it. They don't thank the person who does something for them. They just take it for granted.

There was no point in telling somebody not to cry, she had always thought; indeed there were times when you should do exactly the opposite, when you should urge people to cry, to start the healing that sometimes only tears can bring. But if there was a place for tears of relief, there might even be a place for tears of pride[.]