Oui, mon commandant!

Amkoullel, the Fulani child, now aged twenty-two, began in the second volume of these Memoirs his career of young official in the colonial administration in Upper Volta (Burkina Faso)

After a long journey in which he begins to record all oral histories he became the custodian, the naive young man get married, started a family and became, through a thousand comical adventures, moving or dramatic, a man wise capable of carrying the world on an insightful look, subtle and rigorous. But it is the tremendous energy of this story that is most striking: Beyond his autobiographical character is a fascinating and vivid picture of colonial Africa of that time.

We delight in anecdotes with inimitable verve and humor, we savor the extraordinary gallery of portraits of colonial leaders with evocative nicknames. Over narrative emerges a spiritual evolution that finds its fulfillment at the end of the book, in 1933, when the author, back to Mali, receives from his spiritual master Tierno Bokar, the teachings of love and tolerance which, he says, will fertilize the rest of his life. (French edition)