Westport Public Library BOOK blog

A friend recently forwarded me a New York Times piece from September 23rd about the filming of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency underway in Botswana.

I have been in the thrall of Alexander McCall Smith's stories for years now. Reading the latest book in the series, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, was one of the high points of a recent brief convalescence. With my feet propped up on a pillow I was transported to the agency office at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors in Gaborone, sipping bush tea with Mma Ramotswe and her devoted assistant Grace Makutsi.

The Times article relates that some of the sets, including the office, will become part of a planned "Ladies' Detective Agency Tour."

In a folder of trip ideas that I keep at home I unearthed an article from the May 23, 2005 issue of Time that mentions "Mma Ramotswe tours" offered by a safari company called Africa Insight.

They offer a one day trip which goes out to Mochudi, her ancestral home, where there is a school-turned-local history museum, in the morning, and features a drive around Gaborone, including Zebra Drive and the garage that inspired Speedy Motors, in the afternoon.

There is a second tour, which goes into the farther corners of the countryside to which Mma Ramotswe often travels in her tiny white van.

The Library has up-to-date guidebooks on Botswana and I recently ordered a book called Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide.

I already learned one safari survival tip just from reading the review. You can keep monkeys out of your tent at night (!) with stuffed toy leopards.

The film director reports that while scouting for locales he camped out "beneath a Milky Way that was a luminous stripe across the sky, with stars that glistened like buckets of salt tossed on black velvet."

I want to go!

If any McCall Smith fans are reading this through, I will end on a happy note just for you. The ninth book in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, The Miracle at Speedy Motors, is due mid-April 2008.