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"We don't forget, thought Mma. Ramotswe. Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which come back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are. And who am I? I am Precious Ramotswe, citizen of Botswana, daughter of old Obed Ramotswe who died because he had been a miner and could no longer breathe. His life was unrecorded; who is there to write down the lives of ordinary people?"

Det har mange ord for å skyve, flytte, dytte, bære og laste, men ingen ord for å elske eller for lykke eller for fuglekvitteret på morgenkvisten.

Vi glemmer ikke, tenkte Mma Ramotswe. Vi har kanskje små hoder, men de er like fulle av minner som himmelen kan være full av svermende bier, tusenvis av minner, om lukter, steder, små ting som vi har opplevd og som kommer tilbake når vi minst venter det, så vi skal huske hvem vi er.

'You go back home to your wife', he said. 'If a man leaves his wife too long, she starts to make trouble for him. Believe me. Go back and give her more children.'

But why should I want to go to Zululand? Why should I ever want anything but to live in Botswana, and to marry a Tswana girl? I said to him that Zululand sounded fine, but that every man has a map in his heart of his country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map.

She stopped. It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.