ABSTRACT

This paper examines a type of institutionalized friendship in Lesotho, an independent migrant labor exporting country in southern Africa. These friendships most often occur among adolescent Basotho girls, who refer to each other by the English terms mummies and babies. They are closely related to heterosexual courtship that becomes dominant in late adolescence. Few ethnographic accounts give details about social and emotional relationships during adolescence. During this critical period girls usually experience three of the most profound bodily changes of their lives: Puberty, loss of virginity, and first childbirth (Hastrup, 1978). Furthermore, few ethnographic accounts discuss "homosexual" physical and emotional relationships, nor the adolescent shift from primary association with same-sex playmates and workmates to opposite-sex lovers and marital partners. Lionel Tiger (1969) argues in Men in Groups that women, in contrast to rnen, "do not form bonds. Dependent as most

women are on the earnings and genes of men, they break ranks very soon" (p. 216). His argument is based on a lack of cross-cultural data concerning female friendships, which not only precede, but also exist alongside heterosexual relationships. It is my hope that this paper will contribute to the studies of female sexuality and the social roles of women, which are beginning to fill this ethnographic gap.