NEWS FOR WOMEN African Girls’ School For Farm Management

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27795, 21 October 1955, Page 2

NEWS FOR WOMEN African Girls’ School For Farm Management

A journey to South Africa with two little girls—suspected tuberculosis sufferers—whose mother was in a sanitorium in Switzerland, was the beginning of an unusual life for an Englishwoman, who is the principal of an agricultural college for European girls at Boschetto, in the Orange Free State.

Miss Patience Lang, an assistant lecturer at Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln, told the story in an interview yesterday. Miss Lang, who was a member of the teaching staff at the college at Boschetto for several years before she came to New Zealand, said the Englishwoman, Miss N. Miller, was still principal of the college. As chaperon, she had represented the family of 4he two little girls when with a governess and nurse she took them to South Africa before World War n. The little girls recovered, and their father, as a gesture of thanks, presented Miss Miller with a farm in the Orange Free State. After the first world war, when migrants went to South Africa under a land settlement scheme, she found that many of the wives of the settlers had nowhere to go until their husbands built them homes. She took some of the wives on the farm and taught them poultry keeping, butter making and many other accomplishments that would be useful to them in their new life. The farm became a communal affair. As the work increased the output of the farm increased, and the women were rewarded for their labour.

i When the women went off to their ! own homes eventually, Miss Miller i began a college for European girls. It was not an agricultural college as we know it. Many natives worked on the farms in South Africa, and it was necessary for the girls to learn something about administration, how to manage their native staff and to plan their day. They were taught this at the college. Miss Lang said the college was now recognised by the provincial government, and a certificate was given to girls who passed examinations after one year’s study, and a diploma to those successful after two years’ study. Europeans in South Africa were often good cooks and made some very interesting dishes, largely because they came from European countries and had their own traditional dishes, said Miss Lang. Dutch and Malay dishes predominated. The Dutch people in the early days had brought in

Malayans, and their introduction had had a marked effect on the cooking. Bobotie was quite an original dish of curried mince, she said. It was made with minced meat and breadcrumbs, to which was added chopped onions, curry powder and raw eggs. The latter were mixed with the whole, and the top finished with breadcrumbs and butter and baked in an oven.

Biltong was a dried raw meat composed of ostrich meat and buck meat that had been hung to dry, and was then finely grated and eaten in sandwiches. It was delicious, said Miss Lang. Boerewors, or beef sausage, was made from veal and a high proportion of old trek oxes. Trek oxes were often eight years old before they were slaughtered, and were very tough. The cook’s ingenuity was taxed to make the meat palatable. The Europeans in South Africa were of very mixed stock, and one should be tolerant of them and not too critical, said Miss Lang. One was inclined to think of them as British with British traditions. That was quite wrong. The native problem was very enormous, as the natives greatly outnumbered Europeans.

Natives employed by Europeans were allowed to keep cows, horses, and sheep on their employers’ farmers, and could cultivate their own section of land. In return they must give six months’ labour each year without payment. The native women worked in the houses, she said.

Most native men were married by the time they were 25, and most girls by the time they were 15. By the time the men were 40 they often had a second wife. The first wife, who had a separate establishment, liked this arrangement as the young wife took over the work, and coula have more children.

A farm house that she visited in Natal, about 30 miles from the college, was built of stone. It had no electricity, and the firing for the stove was often wattle cut in the bush, or small cakes of cow manure which had been mixed with clay and dried, said Miss Lang. Ayrshire cattle were kept at this farm, and milking was done by machines. As a precaution against tick-borne diseases a stock inspector supervised the dipping of cattle every five days. Wives of European farmers in the district where she lived taught their children until they were about seven years of age, and then sent them to boarding school at Ladysmith, Miss Lang said.