Amadou-Hampâté Bâ and Kaidara: Traditional Hermeneutics of a Fula Initiation Tale

The Fula tradition explains that Gueno gave the word to the first man. He, initiated by his creator, transmitted his knowledge to his descendants: It was the beginning of a great chain of oral rite-of-passage transmission. For his word, the man was appointed as guardian and guarantor of the universe, and the Fula tradition has made a great effort to keep this word alive. In this article, we will study some aspects included in Kaidara, a tale collected by Amadou-Hampâté Bâ that perfectly reflects this commitment with an esoteric cosmogony, which only initiated people can understand.