Is Botswana on Your Map?

As human beings we are constructors of realities. Last weekend I got caught in what Alexander McCall Smith keeps on constructing in Botswana. Before having read any of his books I had no idea about a country called Botswana nor about the life people lead there. They did not exist on my personal map of the world.

Medieval maps described unknown regions covering them with pictures of monsters, dragons and strange-looking wildlife, sometimes with the text "Hic sunt leones."

In fact those markings indicated that even those regions had a meaning. They somehow existed in people´s minds. But there are things in the world that do not exist even that much, matters that have no reference to. Atoms and radio waves could serve as examples of them.

A couple of years ago a pre-planned, but hasty visit to a bookshop in Edinburgh became my memorable entrance to life in Botswana. Since then I have learned to know Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi as well as Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, and other people in The No. 1 Ladies´Detective Agency.

Had there not been a particular shelf dedicated to Scottish authors alone, I might never have had the possibility to spend my time In the Company of Cheerful Ladies or The Kalahari Typing School for Men.

Last weekend I got again stuck in Botswana, more closely in Caborone, Zebra Drive.

I do not stop admiring Alexander McCall Smith as an author. While reading my first Mma Ramotswe book I had to turn back to the front cover to check the name of the author. Really, the author is a man. In spite of that he describes women´s life leaving no room for leones nor pictures of dragons and monsters.

In an interview in Helsinki Mr McCall Smith was asked what makes this possible. "I just try to listen to women." He also told us that it is not easy. When women notice that they are listened to, they change the topic.

Is there anything to be learned from this? A simple answer: listening is a valuable skill. A not-so-simple answer: describing your own reality is involuntary, something that you do without paying attention to it. If focusing on the "correct" way to describe something, you loose the point, you make choices, in other words you start telling stories. Stories are always told to somebody, for some specific reason. They are stories, not descriptions of the so-called normal life. They take a moral standpoint. They present a challenge to be negotiated about. Stories bring in politics.

McCall Smith having entered as a listener in women´s discussions and chats, automatically changes the situation. What women talk about becomes something they purposefully let him hear or listen to. If that results in receiving and registering information of their normal life is for McCall Smith to decide. Obviously he is not content with what is offered, but reaches to the regions marked with pictures of dragons and "Hic sunt leones."

Another admirable feature in The No 1 Ladies´Detective Agency is the fact that you can pick up any of the eight books to be immediately in "medias res". Picking up the next book you meet the same people, you hear their life stories again, and anyhow the author avoids repetition.

It is evident that he is good at telling people´s life stories in the way we normally tell them. In the course of the life we offer each other situationally specific, lightly different versions of who we are and who we would like to be. Getting stuck with one version only would mean swimming against the currents of life and falsifying reality. In The No 1 Ladies´ Detective Agency it would mean the end of the story. Who would want that?

Have you ever thought about building a learning organization? No matter if it is a family or a business enterprise, you need the skill to make people adopt certain goal-oriented attitudes and behaviour. You may define the goals and the means to reach them, but anyhow people won´t do exactly what you want them to do. We are no copying machines. We want to make our personal versions of the goals as well as of the means and methods of making them become true. The personal and the collective needs to be fitted together. Unless the balance between them is found neither the collective goals nor the individual versions of them will be reached.

So far there are eight books describing The No 1 Ladies´Detective Agency. Each of them is different and all of them fulfill the same purpose. If you want to find out what that purpose is, you could read, for instance The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (ISBN:978-0-349-11773-7).

Botswana and Finland are far from each other. Anyhow, there are evident similarities between these two countries. One of them is described like this:

"Our stomachs live in towns," said Mma Potokwani, patting the front of her dress. "That is where the work is. Our stomachs know that. But our hearts are usually somewhere else."

Spring is coming. It is now five p.m. and almost full daylight. The period of short days is getting over. All who can will travel to Lapland to ski. People are starting to plan their summer, how to get back to the normal state of Finnish life, in the country, by the lakes, away from towns. Before that most traditionally built ladies start thinking of their diet, but similar to Mma Ramotswe very few take strict, concrete measures to limit their life. There is always a Mma Potokwani among one´s friend whose fruit cakes are irresistible...

Strange Occupants in your Body

Have you found any means to get rid of the rubbish that gradually gets accumulated into your joints, muscles and obviously also inside the bones?

I do not mean the mental waste, but the concrete physical waste that stops the muscles from getting their fair share oxygen and nutritions and makes you feel both stiff and stupid. My life - and the life of the people close around me - has been blessed with information of how to start getting rid of the slag that has been accumulating inside you. It is just the start, but without it you´ll be quite helpless and unable to improve the situation. This is due to the fact that as human beings we excel in learning.

Our capacity to learn is enormous, in fact unfathomable. We learn quickly. Our learning is random. The results are permanent.

When you get properly scared and startled, your body will remember it as long as it is alive. Maybe, even after that, but I still lack personal evidence of it.

There are also times and occasions in life when you get hurtlingly and painly disappointed. Your mind starts working to get over it. In the course of the time the mind will get busied and filled up with something else. The trouble fades more or less away. But your body does not put aside anything that has happened to it. It will always remember what the original event felt like.

Traumas accumulate in the body and because we cannot forget, we have to learn to live with the original reactions. This is how an occasional state of alarm becomes the normal state of the body. In a while you have no idea of anything better. You go on, not having any reference point indicating that the situation should somehow be changed - until you have no more energy to continue, until your body and mind start rebelling.

We are not only excellent learners. We are also able to make use of what other people have learned. I find it to be the most important and admirable feature of human life.

Have you ever paid attention to your dreams? I am a matter-of-fact person, not keen on any horoscopes, bio-rhythms or dream interpretation. However, there are times when some dreams are so obvious that you find them having a special message.

Last night I saw tens of thousands of ugly, strange people occupying my country. They were of all ages and there were masses of them. They just marched in and we - I do not know who the ´we´exactly were - were given an alarm of possible increase of robbery and trouble. We got out, and some of the occupants had tied their dogs at the gate. We had to negotiate and get them out somehow.

Having woken up I had to go and drink three glasses of water. As I had gone to a special treatment in the morning, obviously - and hopefully - all the accumulated waste products were on the move to get out of my body. Apparently it was a big enough of an event to be shown as a film on the screen of my mind. - Where I went to and whose learning and expertise did I make use of is to be seen here.

It is quite interesting to get acquainted with the pre-traumas version of one´s body. It feels strange. I mentioned this to my daughter. "Just install all your stiffness and despair where they used to be, and you will feel normal again." she said.

That is alternative one. I got another recommendation as well: "Have you ever thought of going to a spa, taking a mud bath and pressure showers?"

Me, just lazying around in a spa?