. He displayed this self-control the time he met the work inspector. The work inspector told the union that only some, mostly the unimportant, demands of the workers would be accepted. The remaining ones would be considered later. Instead of getting angry, Bakayoko calmly turned and asked the members of the union if they agreed that this decision wouldn’t be acceptable. In that same section we saw Bakayoko get angry when, in a meeting with the railway management, Dejean the director slapped him across the face. In anger, Bakayoko jumped up and wrapped his fingers around the director’s neck. It took some of the union delegates to calm him down. One problem Bakayoko had was showing too little emotion. For instance, when he got word that his mother was killed and his daughter was hurt, instead of returning home to be with his family, he went on to Dakar leaving people wondering if he had a heart at all. Toward the end of the book Bakayoko did start to show that he could demonstrate his feelings.I think that the key to emotional self-control for African leaders is that while they are not suppose to show too much emotion, sometimes it is ok to just as long as you do it in an appropriate manner.On the other issue about European political structures changing African leadership, while researching my term paper, I found out that before the European influence, African leadership was not unified. Each individual group had its own leaders. The Europeans introduced a system of government in Africa whereby everyone was unified under either one leader or a group of leaders. This type of rule could be seen in God’s Bits of Wood. The union served as the central control for all the people. It allowed people to come together and discuss working conditions and made it possible for everyone to realize that there were others that had similar feelings about the way they were being treated at work. As a united force they woul...
