As the long summer months dragged on (February is August here), my days returned to something approaching a routine.

There was my blog on Virgin Maverick, which I was working hard to turn into a community effort. There was my work with Mma Ramosawa on Always-On products, using wireless networks as a platform for applications. And there was a hole in my heart, missing Jenni, and missing my kids.

There was nothing for it but to go out of my comfort zone, my straight-line walks from the Sun building to the Carlton Center, and on to Commissioner Street. I had to look up from my life.

I saw Mma Ramosawa as a possible guide and one day, after we’d spent an hour in earnest conversation over bush tea, I asked her if she might take me to lunch. Where, she asked. Out, I said.

She nodded in her knowing way and picked up a small handbag, in which I knew she kept a string bag for carrying groceries, as well as her money and identification papers. It didn’t look big enough to carry much else.

We looked quite a sight, a middle-aged white man in a polo shirt and khakis, walking arm-in-arm with a Motswana woman of the traditional shape, ambling around Johannesburg’s Central Business District, heading toward its outskirts.

“Most white people, and ever-fewer black people, ever do this,” she said.

“Walk arm in arm?” I asked.

She chuckled. “No. Few people here walk. Everything is a drive away. A half hour away by car. To Sandton, to the Airport, to the Racecourse, to Pretoria. Everything is done by car. It is lower class and dangerous to do as we’re doing.”

That made me laugh. “It has usually been that way for me,” I said, adopting as I often did her proper, almost British idiomatic speaking style. “When I lived in Houston, Texas, back in the 1970s, people marveled that I rode my bicycle downtown rather than driving. In Atlanta, we had to drive many miles for a meal until very recently. Now it’s that way again. Takes me back to my youth.”

“Well, here it can take you to your death, believe me,” Mma Ramosawa said. “There is much hunger in Africa, even here, very little good will toward men. This is why I keep my handbag,” she said, patting it with her free hand.

“In case you find a bargain?” I asked.

“In case of trouble,” she said, very seriously now.

I dropped her hand and looked at her in wonder. “You’re armed, aren’t you?”

“You’re not?”

“No. I never thought of it.”

She shook her head. “Silly white liberal, silly man. You think the world will be your ideal because you believe in it? You are lucky I came with you today, very lucky.”

“I wouldn’t have gone out without you. I figured you’d know where the good food was,” I said.

She laughed. “Because I am of traditional shape?” Her eyes were brooking no nonsense.

So I smiled and nodded. “That and you live here. I’m new in town, ma’am,” I said, putting on a Texas accent for the last.

“OK, then,” she replied, sounding like a character in “Raising Arizona.” (The movies are their own language, an international one.) And with that we turned into a stall. It held several stools before a counter. An awning covered our heads, a colorful awning with designs of flowers and African birds on it. An old woman scurried this way and that behind the counter. I noticed there were a half-dozen men, all black, seated around us. A few looked at me strangely, and I might have been intimidated, then walked on, had I been alone. But I had Mma Ramosawa to protect me, so I nodded in a friendly manner and sat down.

“Annie,” Mma Ramosawa called out. The woman behind the counter had the remains of a small cigar in her mouth. Her skin was leathered, her figure long fallen toward the ground, and when she opened her mouth in response I noticed most of her teeth were missing.

Mma Ramosawa held up two fingers.

“Ko-Kola,” I said.

Mma Ramosawa shook her head. “What is that?”

“That’s what we call a Coke back home. Ko-Kola, short for Coca-Cola,” I said.

“Fine. Two Kokola,” she said again, holding up the fingers.

I shrugged. The old woman kept working, back and forth, making no move to fill our order, giving no indication she’d even heard it. Mma Ramosawa quickly changed the subject. “So how could we build a security system Annie might afford?” she asked me earnestly.

I looked at the old woman, who was now talking in an animated way to one of the other customers, and finally back to Mma Ramosawa. “Well, Mma,” I suggested. “Given the small size of this shop, I would think a network of single-chip motion detectors, connected to a system mounted high on that wall so it wouldn’t be stolen, might help. And she might buy it in conjunction with some of the other merchants around here. The problem would be getting anyone to respond, and then what would there be to steal anyway?”

“The stove,” Mma Ramosawa said. She motioned toward a griddle behind old Annie. It was fed, I noticed, by coals below it. It seemed to be from another century, and I don’t mean the 20th. I leaned over and noticed that Annie’s coolers were also from another time, a more recent one. They were large metal tubs filled with ice, from which I saw the tops of bottles. They made my mouth water.

Finally, Annie came over. “Wha you lookin’ at?” she asked.

“I was admiring your accomodations,” I said, smiling.

Annie made with the back of her hand as if to smack me. Mma Ramosawa held up her hand, palm out. “He’s new,” she said earnestly. “He really does mean to compliment.”

“I don’t need your condescension,” the old woman said. “I don’t need it from you, or the government either. Black men in suits, phaw!” I noticed she had reached under the counter and, from a cooler stored there, picked up a long plastic tube of ground meat. “Two, right?” she asked. Mma nodded. Annie’s right hand tugged at the meat, pulling some away, then turned toward her griddle and, dividing the meat into two parts, again with one hand, she slapped both onto the hot metal. The sizzling raised a cloud of steam. She took a jar of spices from next to the griddle and shook them over the meat, then slapped at it with a long spatula.

“Annie is the expert on everything here, the Mayor of the CBD,” said Mma Ramosawa.

“Mayor of CBD. Mayor of nothing. I didn’t know this was CBD until they told me last year,"”said the old woman.

“How are things?” I asked genially.

Annie shifted the cigar in her mouth, and pulled it out with her left hand. (She’d used the right only for the meat.) She placed it on a counter and pushed both hands into soapy water, then into less-soapy water next to it. Finally she picked up a towel and wiped them before addressing my question.

“It is as it always is,” she said frankly. “White vultures fly, black ones replace them. Nothing much changes, does it?”

“You don’t care for democracy?” I asked.

“Phaw,” she said again. “When has any place in this whole continent had an election where the result wasn’t known beforehand?”

“There was Kabati in Kenya,” Mma Ramosawa said hopefully.

“And what happened?” said Annie accusingly, poking at the meat again with her spatula. “The bosses they say no, the Kabati’s get corrupted, and the whole idea of ending the robbery drops dead.” Annie reached into the cooler again, and pulled out a peeled onion, which she sliced unevenly on top of the meat.

“What about Tony Leon?” I asked, not mentioning how much trouble that man had already caused me.

“No one has to listen to him. He’s just another midget, a white one, feeding at the trough, with his bloody half the white vote and what else? Phaw!” Annie said. She mashed on the meat again, then flipped it over to cook the onions. “Cheese?”

“Please,” said Mma Ramosawa.

“Cheese wit,” I said. “American slang,” I added.

“And Togo,” Annie continued. “The dictator dies, and the Army installs the son so they can continue on as before. Nothing ever changes.”

“Botswana has had regular elections since independence,” Mma Ramosawa said, with a touch of pride.

“And how many of those elections has the ruling party lost?” Annie countered. She pulled out some rolls, sliced them, and placed them on the grill next to the meat, now topped with slices of processed cheese. Finally, she reached into the cooler and drew out two bottles, popping the tops with a bottlecap hidden into her apron and pouring them into paper cups filled with ice from the bucket.

“It’s no better where you were,” Annie said at last to me, as she poured out our sodas. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

I nodded. The sandwiches looked lovely, but they would taste like ashes.