THE YEARS OF APPRENTICESHIP

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A curious paradox marks Sankara's personality: warm, extroverted, passionate about debate, driven to the extreme by the desire to convince, cheerful, fond of music and celebrations, fond of endless evenings, convivial, Sankara is at the same time a secretive, solitary, almost closed-off man.

Sankara speaks passionately of the collective adventure in which, since 1983, he has engaged his compatriots. But he rarely opens up, and introspection, the exploration of his own socialization, his family and personal history, repulses him. The extreme modesty, so characteristic of practically all great African civilizations, explains his reserve as soon as the conversation approaches the familial, private sphere. Sankara is Mossi on his mother's side and Fulani on his father's. Thomas

was born 38 years ago in the village of Yako, between Kaya and Ouahigouya, in the Mossi kingdom of Yatenga. All his life, right up to the present day, his mother has lived the arduous existence of Mossi peasant women; Sankara, in conversation with Rapp, evokes the grueling days, the constant and exhausting labor of his mother. He speaks of it with indignation, but also with affection. The dominant figure of his childhood and adolescence is undoubtedly his father. Sankara, by virtue of his origins, is a Slimi Moagoa, a member of a lower class, despised by the feudal lords. Jean Ziegler and J. Ph. Rapp, Thomas SANKARA: A New African Power (1986) 23 Mossi. I insist: neither a “true Mossi” nor a “true Fulani,” Sankara was forced, very early on, to define himself in relation to his own actions and convictions. The conquest of his own identity was a difficult task from the outset. While the Mossi feudal lords, aristocrats of the kingdom and masters of the land, looked askance at this son of a Fulani, the Fulani themselves did not accept him as one of their own.