Pula

In the waterless wastes of Bechuanaland there is no happier word than pula, which means first "rain," and hence almost everything else that is good. Last week in a tidy suburban cottage outside London, a handsome, long-legged law student gazed at his comely,wife of eight years and murmured a heartfelt "Pula" Soon afterward he canceled his plans for a December bar examination, put his Croydon cottage up for sale and made plans to go home. "From now on," he said, "I'm going to be a farmer."

Thus, like a shower of rain after years of drought, the six-year exile of Seretse Khama, onetime chieftain of Bechuanaland's Bemangwato tribesmen, came to an end. Seretse had brought the drought on himself by marrying a blonde London typist named Ruth Williams in 1948, to the outrage of all British colonials in Bechuanaland and to large numbers of his own subjects, who, rather than accept a white chieftainess, transferred their allegiance from Seretse to his Uncle Tshekedi. To still the clamor, Britain's Laborite Colonial Office simply plucked the young king from his throne and sentenced him (on an allowance of $4,200 a year) to exile in Britain for life. But the clamor was far from stilled. In the years that followed, while Seretse studied law and sired two children, his case was argued again and again in the tribal councils of Bechuanaland and the corridors of London's Westminster.

By last summer all concerned were ready for a compromise. Once out of power, the Labor Party, which had originally decreed his banishment, became a champion of the young chieftain's return. At Labor's prompting, Seretse and his uncle got together again and agreed to draw up documents by which each renounced all rights to the contested throne. With this accomplished, the Tory government agreed to let both return to Bechuanaland as private citizens, with the right to help rule the land of their ancestors as two members of the governing council.

For the moment, at least, everyone seemed satisfied--except the white colonials, whose disapproval of the mixed marriage had been loudest. "What," they were asking last week, "will happen if Mrs. Khama expects us to receive her black husband in our social rounds?"

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