“I don’t care about people. I don’t care about anything, not even the white man. I want to feel what it is like to live in a free country and then maybe some of the evils in my life will correct themselves.”

Here, Makhaya lays out his reasons for leaving South Africa, a country that he identifies as a site of both political and personal oppression. Although the evils his life do “correct themselves” when he settles in Botswana, they do so, not because he is free of people, but because he finds a meaningful place in the community of Golema Mmidi.

“He sat quite still, staring ahead with calm, empty eyes, and he looked so lordly for all his tattered coat and rough cowhide shoes that Makhaya smiled and walked up to him and greeted him.”

Makhaya is impressed, but not necessarily intimidated, by the old man, who is soon revealed as Dinorego. Indeed, this first vision of Dinorego offers essentials of his personality that will be important to the narrative: he is a man of concentration and dignity, as Makhaya discerns, and draws people to him with his amiable, unpretentious nature.

“The country presented overwhelming challenges, he said, not only because the rainfall was poor but because the majority of the people engaged in subsistence farming were using primitive techniques that ruined the land. All this had excited his interest.”

With this quotation, the narrator explains an essential aspect of Gilbert’s personality: his attraction to “overwhelming challenges.” Gilbert discovers that the odds are stacked against him—by Matenge, by ingrained customs, and by the harsh landscape—in his mission to bring better agricultural practices to Botswana. Yet, he is willing to accept such obstacles and thrives under conditions of pressure and opposition.