The Boers' Home Life.

Manawatu Herald, 2 November 1899, Page 2

The Boers' Home Life.

The Boers are very uncleanly* The ordinary homestead is built in a primitWe manner, square atteV jigly, with practically sealed windows; the floors are made of mad, stamped by E&ffirs, the top layer being mixed with bullocks and goat's blood, which hardens, and gives, it in time!, by continued smearinga of manure, ft polished surface, somewhat resembling mahogany. This smearing process, which is done by the hand> keeps up a fresh cow stable smell* Manure is used in sickness. Children are covered with it in case of measles and other diseases. One bedroom and one good-siz^d four-posted bedstead has to do for parent* and children, and not infrequently grownup sons and daughters. The Boer woman makes the Kaffirs do all the work, who wait uqon the family hand and foot. The result is the women get inactive and when outraged nature refuses to work they use strong medicines which make great havoc among them. They become enormously fat. Their ablu* tions are seldom. "Allamaohte man," screamed an old vrouw, who had been ordered by the doctor a hot mustard footpath, "do you want to kill me, I haven't washed my feet for the last 80 years." Their staple food is mutton and rice, or mutton and stamped mealies. Bread is made from corn in remote places, which they only cultivate for their own nse, and is very often ground by hand. A leaven of sour dough is used, and in winter the dough is made to rise by placing it in the beds they get up from. An English* man fights shy of Boer bread. It is a well-known fact that the Boers, women included, seldom change their garment 1 , unless laid up with sickness. A woman will sometimes remove her bodice (if very warm) on going to bed and replace it with a <hawl.