Grade 5 History RTHL Week 4: Roles in Early African Farmer Society

We are talking about the roles of men and women and children in early African farmer society. A role is something that you do or a way of behaving, Grapevine. It's not something you eat. Having a role is like having a job. In farming communities there were certain jobs for men and boys and certain jobs for women and girls. All the jobs were important. One of the many jobs that men had to do was to hunt for wild animals. They learned this skill from the stand. So they grew crops, they herded cattle, but they also hunted wild animals. The men also had to build a crawl as well as patch the roof of their mud hut. Not only did the men also have to look after the cattle, they had to milk them as well. They thickened and soured the milk into a mousie. Have any of you tasted that? The men, with the help from their sons, also produced leather products from animal skins. They would produce things like blankets and items of clothing when it got colder. The men also smelted iron for farm implements and arrowheads for their spears. There's a full lesson later on in the term about how they actually smelted the iron. The men, as head of the family, also had to attend meetings with the chief and other headmen of their homestead. The homestead was made up of different huts of people. There they would discuss things like do they accept new people into the community, what punishment they hand out for people that had done wrong things, as well as whether they would go to war against another group of people. If they took the decision to go to war, then the men would also have to go and fight. Right, what role did the women play? Great Fires, we cannot underestimate the role that the women played. They were the farmers. They looked after the crops, they planted, they weeded, and they harvested. We need to acknowledge how important they were to their homestead because if there were no wild animals and if there were no cattle to be slaughtered, the food came from the crops that the women looked after. They planted things such as sorghum and millet. You will have another lesson about that. But the ladies played a vital role in the life at a homestead. They were also expert weavers and made baskets and mats. They made pottery containers for cooking and for storing the grain that they had harvested from their crops. They also collected firewood and water. While they were out, they also looked for wild fruit and berries, as well as herbal plants. The San had taught him about the herbal medicine that they used and passed this knowledge on to them. Another thing that the ladies of the group collected together with their daughters was cow dung for the walls and floors of their houses. Before you all go, eww, remember, grapevines, that cows are herbivores and that their dung is, in fact, just mushed up grass or leaves. What they would do is they would collect this and then they would mix it with water and make it into a nice mushy pile and they would spread this on the floors and walls of their house. They were very proud of it, as you can see in the picture. This dung was the best insulation against cold weather. The children did not go to school, as you do, Grapevine. They learned their roles and their skills from the adults in their community. We have experienced this already in the San, where the elders taught them how to make arrows and things like that. In their teenage years, children went through initiation, which was a ritual to be accepted into the community as an adult. Right, Grapevine, now it's your turn. I'd like you to find the next blank page in your history book and fold it in half lengthwise. You would create two columns then. The heading for the first column is the duties of women and girls and the heading for the second column is the duties of men and boys. You can write that in bubble print and decorate it very nicely. Now, do your best to copy this note as neatly as possible onto the blank page with the heading. Remember to space the note out across your page so that you use your whole column rather than have everything squashed up at the top of your page. The first slide is of the whole note and the following two slides thereafter are close-ups of the top half and the bottom half of the note. I hope that makes it a bit easier to read. Right, Grapevine, there you have an overall impression of what I would like you to create on your blank page. I do realise that not everybody can draw, so if you would like not to draw the picture, that's fine, but it would look nice if you can. You will see at the top work for women and girls and at the other side work for men and boys. Please spread this out as much as you can down the length of your page and make it look pretty. Right, now we can take a closer look at the work the women and girls did. Grapevine, you will see working in the field, planting, weeding and harvesting. Another job was fetching water. Another job was collecting firewood together with cow dung. I have also mentioned that they collected herbal plants. Preparing food, they made the beer. For the men, they cleared the fields of trees before the women moved in to do the planting. They also built houses, fetched the roos and built the cattle crawls. They also looked after the animals, the herding, the milking of the cows and the thickening and souring the milk into Amarni, Amarsi. We had a very famous herd boy that became a world statement. Anybody remember his name? The second half of the page, we said that they prepared the food. They also made beer. We have discussed the plastering of the walls and floors of the houses with cow dung as well as that they made pots and basks. Moving over to the men, the butchering of animals, that was the slaughtering of animals. Working the leather produced from animal skins. I have said that they learned how to smelt iron and made arrowheads and farming implements. We did mention that they go to war. And they also had to go to meetings to make decisions. And that is the end of your lesson. Thank you, Grade 5s.