Two comments about domestic helpers

Comment one: I have a large curriculum that details the topics for each subject for Standards 6 and 7. For each topic, it has a few suggested activities and examples to aid the teacher with lesson planning. Here is a picture of Topic 11: Express emotions.

As you can see, one suggested example is “Yesterday I was angry with my domestic helper, she had scorched my shirt with a hot iron.” Now, I’m not one of these Thomas Piketty types who believes that there’s some kind of “problem” with “global inequality” of “wealth.” Really, no one gets angrier at his domestic helpers than I do. But I question the relevance of this example to my students’ daily lives.

Comment two: There are two longer works in English that every Basotho schoolchild reads (though I understand they are being fazed out with the arrival of the new integrated curriculum). One is a play called My Uncle Grey Bhonzo. It’s always tough to tell whether students really comprehend the English they read (even though they are happy to respond “yes” when I ask “Do you understand?”). So I was really happy when they began referencing the book to make jokes with each other. One of the characters is Bhadenga, a hapless, ridiculous domestic servant who is constantly being called back and forth by his master, Grey Bhonzo. Anytime someone knocks on the classroom door, one of the students runs to go unlock it (we latch the doors to keep them from blowing open with the wind), and if no student volunteers to open the door, one of the students will shout “Bhadenga! Open!”