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The Full Cupboard of Life
The Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith Pantheon, 2004 208 pp., $13.97 |
Our impressions of Africa have been informed for many years by the mysterious jungle seething with evil depicted verbally in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and visually in numerous Hollywood films. As Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe lamented in an influential lecture first presented in 1975, such representations have created an image of Africa that emphasizes savagery, chaos, and violence. News stories about the catastrophic spread of AIDS, endless civil wars, and decades-long droughts afflicting the continent only add to a common perception of Africa as a dark inferno.
Alexander McCall Smith's best-selling series, the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, paints an alternative picture that celebrates the rich variety of African life, even in the midst of poverty and trouble. In the founding novel, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, we meet Precious Ramotswe (pronounced Ram-ot-swáy), who establishes the first detective agency in Botswana with the proceeds from the sale of a herd of cattle left by her beloved Daddy at his death. Mma Ramotswe, as she is properly addressed, uses this conventional African dowry to establish herself as an unconventional modern professional. She is repeatedly described as being "traditionally built" (in other words, she's a large woman), but Mma Ramotswe is actually an exemplar of the new urban African, a far cry from Conrad's incomprehensible savage.
When an officious lawyer questions whether a woman can be a detective, the decidedly feminist Mma Ramotswe thinks, in an aside typical of the gentle humor pervading the series, "how dare he say that about women, when he didn't even know that his zip was half undone! Should she tell him?" She retorts, "Women are the ones who know what's going on. … They are the ones with eyes. Have you not heard of Agatha Christie?" Indeed, Mma Ramotswe has the eyes, ears, and heart to help people solve their problems. Ably assisted by her competent secretary, Mma Makutsi (who earned an unprecedented 97 percent average at the Botswana College of Secretarial and Office Skills, and a reserved but kind automobile mechanic with the imposing name of Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni,1 Mma Ramotswe pursues her cases, fueled by numerous cups of strong bush tea.
The New York Times Book Review dubbed Mma Ramotswe "the Miss Marple of Botswana," and her ability to listen sympathetically to her clients' problems is reminiscent of Christie's deceptively demure detective. Like Miss Marple, Mma Ramotswe draws on her knowledge of human nature and social norms to solve her cases. One of the charms of the traditional British "cozy" mystery, at least for me, is the chance to immerse myself in the domestic details of a new society. I confess to longing for an invitation to the vicar's for afternoon sherry or to attend a garden fete with eccentric British villagers. McCall Smith's mysteries work in a similar fashion, bringing us into a tightly knit community with strong social bonds and carefully articulated manners and morals.
Mma Ramotswe has considerably more chutzpah than Miss Marple, however, as she impersonates a nurse, confronts a witch doctor, approaches strange men in bars, and tracks down a crocodile. And in contrast to the classic mystery story, these books do not revolve around a single meticulously plotted murder; in fact, few of Mma Ramotswe's cases involve death. Instead, she helps her clients solve problems that are most frequently associated with restoring family unity-straying husbands, rebellious teenagers, disputed fathers, disappearing sons, questionable suitors.
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