ABSTRACT
When I was head of a subdivision on the Upper Volta, I went on tour in the first months of my stay, and landed unexpectedly in a distant village, little visited. The Chief gave me a good reception. I came back there two years later, at the end of my tour, and had a still better reception. The Chief, however, did not seem to me to be the same man. I had before me an old man, while it was a young man who had received me the first time, and I recognized him, standing behind the old man. I asked the two of them why the chieftainship of the village had passed from the one to the other without my being told of it. The old man said to me :’He whom you see behind me was in front of me,’ and he explained, ‘It is I who am the Chief, to-day as the other time, and in front of this man, as behind him. But two years ago we did not know you, and he showed himself in my place.’ It is not unusual to fail to recognize the real chief right away, but it makes one stop and think. And I propose to analyse the machinery of our administration through the chiefs, bearing this incident in mind.
