Grace Makutsi

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Grace Makutsi is a character in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith.

Born in Bobonong, Botswana, she moved to the capital, Gaborone, to attend the Botswana Secretarial College. Mma Ramotswe originally employed her as her secretary, but she was later promoted to assistant private detective and also came to act as assistant manager at Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s garage. A hardworking and intelligent woman who achieved the unbelievably high mark of 97% in her Botswana secretarial college examinations, Mma Makutsi also runs her own business, the Kalahari Typing School for Men. She is trilingual in Kalanga, Setswana and English. She suffers, however, from a lack of confidence in her appearance, due to her large spectacles and 'difficult' complexion.

[edit] Special relationships

Family: Mma Makutsi stays in close contact with her family in Bobonong and regularly sends money home to them. For a while her sick brother, Richard, lived with her in Gaborone and she nursed him until his death from an AIDS-related illness. In the first book, she also has an uncle living in the capital.

Work: Mma Makutsi has a great deal of respect and affection for, and loyalty towards, her employer, Mma Ramotswe, although she does not share the latter's enthusiasm for bush tea, which she once claimed tasted of rats. She also gets on very well with Mr J L B Matekoni, but has been very much less friendly with Charlie, the elder of the two apprentices at the garage.

Romance: Men usually seem to find Mma Makutsi less attractive than her pretty but shallow college contemporaries. She did, however, start a short-lived relationship with one of her typing students. She is currently (following the end of the sixth book In the Company of Cheerful Ladies) newly engaged to furniture-store manager Phuti Radiphuti, whom she met at a dancing class.

Footwear: Mma Makutsi has a great weakness for shoes.