Lesotho -- Social life and customs; Sotho (African people)
consisting of the Principal Medical Officer, resident at Maseru, and a
Medical Officer at most of the stations, with a staff of native
dispensers. Medical attendance is free to all officials and their
families, and to the police; and also to the whole nation between the
hours of ten to twelve daily, at the dispensary, a nominal fee of
sixpence being charged by the Government to cover the cost of the
medicine received.
The revenue is considerable, and is chiefly derived from the hut tax.
This is a tax levied on each wife in reality, though it is nominally on
the hut. It used to be 10s. for each hut, but has now been raised to £1
each. A man having two wives pays £2, though he may have three or more
huts, and so on.
The expenditure consists of the salaries of all Government officials,
including natives, cost of maintaining the roads, educational grants,
and building and repairing of Government buildings, with various other
minor expenses connected with the administration, pensions, &c. The work
of education is a heavy item, there being over 100 schools. The
Missionary Societies are the Paris Evangelical, the Anglican and the
Roman Catholic. I have placed them in the order in which they stand.
The French missionaries were the first to visit Basutoland, and are a
big majority. They have done much for the Basuto, apart from religious
instruction and example, for in the early days of their arrival they
taught the people the use of many cereals and plants, of which, till
then, they were ignorant, and also how to build, to plough, and reap,
and the European methods of irrigation, as well as introducing into the
country various domestic animals, such as the pig, the cat, and a dog,
superior to the miserable specimens already to be found in the villages.
Fowls, turkeys, ducks, and geese were also first introduced by the
missionaries.
There are now several industrial schools in different parts of the
country, in which the boys are taught masonry, carpentry, blacksmith's
and painter's trades, besides the three "R's." Many of these boys show
considerable ability, and are painstaking and neat in their work, taking
a real pride in it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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