On April 11th my school celebrated Cultural Day. I had missed the celebration last year since I was away for a Peace Corps workshop so I wasn’t sure what to expect. In the end I had a lot of fun, ate some great food, and learned more about Basotho culture. The students all came dressed in traditional Basotho outfits (some were dressed for their presentations). As you can see blankets are a huge part of Basotho traditional wear.
Usually, I was told, the students wear the very traditional Basotho dress: animal skins. Back in the day before fabric and Christianity came to Lesotho, Basotho used to wear animal hides. The school would rent these costumes on Cultural Day and the students would them. My teachers showed me pictures from previous Cultural Days; the girls are usually topless with an animal skin skirt and the boys where fur. For whatever reason the school decided against it this year (it might have been because of the weather). But one of my students did end up wearing the traditional Basotho garment.
Food
We required all the students to bring some sort of traditional Basotho food for the day (if you didn’t bring food, you didn’t eat). Some of these foods Basotho still eat, others they rarely make.
Maize: the staple food of Basotho. Maize to Basotho is like rice to Asians.
Pumpkin: Both steamed and cooked. The green item is made with baby pumpkins (still green).
Papa (finely ground maize mixed in boiling water) and greens
Fried Papa
Maize and whole grain mix
Steamed, home-made bread
Dried peaches: Peaches grow everywhere in Lesotho
Fried Maize that was ground: apparently this is travel food
Skits
For the past few weeks, during their Sesotho class, the students have been preparing skits to present on this day. They show various traditional cultural activities.
When a baby is born the mother is not allowed to leave the house. On the next full moon the mother invites young people to the house to do various activities. If the baby is a girl she will invite teenage girls to grind maize (the girl sitting on the ground in the pictures), sweep, and collect water. If it’s a boy (there was no skit of this) then teenage boys will play with sticks.
Basotho women carry their babies (or in this case stuffed animals) on their backs, supported by many blankets. This allows them to care for their child while giving them the motility to continue with their daily work.
This skit showed men catching rats in the field. One set of men scare the rate (which would be found in long grass) towards one side of the field while another set of men wait to catch the rats when they come their way.
Traditional witch doctors are still found in Lesotho. These girls depict a few scenes where villagers see a witch doctor for various reasons. The girl in white is the doctor, the girl in orange is her assistant, and the other girl is a customer.
Boys doing a traditional dance.
The Form Bs depicted a traditional wedding. The girl in the orange blanket is the bride, the boy in the teal and black blanket with a hat is the groom and the boy in the middle is the grandfather conducting the ceremony. During a traditional wedding the family slaughters a cow and the bile is poured over the new couple to signify their new union. The cow is then slit evenly between the two families and some of it is eaten.
Back in the day, when a woman was barren, they would have the woman walk around the village carrying a stone on her back. They would then place the stone in a well and she would have to drink the water from the well. This was supposed to give her children.
Gum boot dance: many Basotho men go to work in the mines and these boys did a dance commonly done there. The mine culture is very unique since all the workers come from different countries and therefor have different cultures and languages. I’ve heard the language spoken in the mine is a combination of all the different host languages.
These boys are showing a traditional sword fight.
And lastly the teachers broke out in song and dance to end the events.
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