'Ladies' Detective' film brings Tinsel Town to tiny Botswana

"Film is all about make believe and we could shoot this anywhere," Moore says. "We could have gone to Arizona and shot in Arizona, or we could have gone to a place where they offered us economic subsidies, and that had similar light, and we would bring in the African costumes and we'd bring in the African people. But it would have been like ripping the heart out of the project."

McCall Smith says he was relieved, as well.

"I would have been embarrassed if it had been done elsewhere," he says from a car heading to the movie set. "I think people in Botswana would have felt a real sense of having been deprived of something."

Just outside downtown Gaborone, one can now find Speedy Motors – the car repair shop owned by J.L.B. Matekoni, Mma Ramotswe's suitor.

One recent day, a good percentage of the 200-person film crew was crammed into the garage (previously just an empty space, now convincingly filled with tools and rags), shooting a scene.

Forty-six percent of the film's crew members are from Botswana, Moore says; of the 41 actors with speaking roles, 26 are local. Additionally, there are 1,200 extras – including the women sitting across the street selling oranges, a typical Botswana roadside scene.

"OK, don't anticipate the car," calls Academy Award-winning British director Anthony Minghella.

Royal Shakespeare Company actor Lucian Msamati, who plays J.L.B. Matekoni, keeps his face blank until Grammy-winning soul singer Jill Scott, cast as Mma Ramotswe, drives up in her tiny white van – a vehicle with which readers of the book will be quite familiar.

Although Ms. Scott hadn't read the books before she auditioned for the role of Mma Ramotswe, she says she was taken by the script.

"I thought, 'Wow, a whole script with no sex, no violence, nothing that a child couldn't watch. That's really nice.' "

Scott gets out of the van and walks over to Msamati, talking in a perfect Botswana accent. Kgomotso Tshwenyego nods in approval.

Before the filming, Ms. Tshwenyego worked as a secretary at the University of Botswana. But after seeing an ad in the newspaper, she auditioned as a dialect coach for the crew. Minghella hired her.

"I told Anthony I didn't have any formal training," she says. "But that didn't bother him."

Now she works with the international actors, helping them widen their mouth and roll their Rs to sound local.

Other Botswana staffers have also vetted the script and costume designs, making sure that everything gives an accurate portrait of their country.

"Anyone who's watching this will have a good impression of life in Botswana," Tshwenyego says.

A positive, yet real, view of Africa

That is one of the aspects of this movie that appealed to Msamati, Scott's co-star. Although the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series has taken some criticism for being too sunny and for ignoring disease and war, Msamati, who grew up in Zimbabwe, says it's a relief to work on a production that shows a truer, happier picture of the continent.

"No story is the be all and end all – they're beginnings," he says. "And this is a fantastic beginning. There is not a single white character, no well-meaning Westerner trying to help Africa. These are positive images of Africa and Africans."

Having the movie shot in Botswana accentuates those feelings, he says.

"That gives me a sense of responsibility," he says. "I must do it justice."

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