Domesticity and Colonialism in Belgian Africa: Usumbura's Foyer Social, 1946-1960

[Excerpt …] By 1957, 15 percent of the African women living in the colonial city of Usumbura, Ruanda-Urundi (present-day Bujumbura, Burundi), were participating in a government-sponsored educational and social welfare program. 1 Foyers sociaux , or social homes, were Belgian domestic training institutions for African women, founded for married women living in colonial urban centers. Some women were learning to cook, mend, iron, and wash clothes, and how to wean their infants and decorate their homes, and a select few were being trained to work (for pay) as auxiliary aids or monitors in the cla... Mehr ...