In his address at the Memorial Service for Dr. J. H. Oldham on 3 June 1969 Dr. Visser tʼHooft, Secretary General of the World Council of Churches, referred more than once to J. H. Oldham's singular gift of ‘reading the signs of the times ’. This insight into the meaning and implications of events and trends, past, present, and anticipated, is what statesmen in all walks of life desire though few achieve it. In the troubled years after the founding of the International African Institute in 1926, up to the outbreak of war in 1939, the cross currents of events, policies, ideologies rocked even long-established institutions. The steady course held by the young International African Institute, and its progressive development, was due to a remarkable quartet of men: Lord Lugard, Sir Hans Visscher, Professor Malinowski, and Dr. Oldham. Between them they represented the main sources from which the Institute drew its early strength, its supporters, and its research workers: African governments, foundations, anthropologists and linguists, and missionaries with specialized knowledge of African languages and cultures.

This paper was drafted many years ago and it was against the background of this and other unpublished material that I came to the view about the nature of bride-wealth indicated in my paper ‘Social Character of Bride-Wealth, with Special Reference to the Azande’ (Man, 1934, 194).

In this paper I shall attempt to set out the ideas of morality and of the structure of society in so far as they can be found reflected in Swahili Islamic literature. This literature is of two kinds. Firstly the didactic literature, mainly in prose, in which rules of conduct are given by Islamic teachers; secondly the narrative, legendary literature, mainly in verse, in which many social and moral concepts may be found, either expressed in a straightforward didactic form, as versified proverbs, or as it were by implication, in which case the underlying ideas can be made explicit by extrapolation.

Most developing countries are said to have far too few skilled workers. They are certainly limited in the number and size of technical schools they can afford to support. However, technical trainees may be too ‘high-powered’ to be useful in small-scale, indigenous businesses and most holders of technical certificates drift into work quite different from that for which they were trained (Foster, 1965, pp. 294-5; Pfefferman, 1968, p. 113). Alternative and much cheaper sources of skilled workmen are provided by training within industry and apprenticeship to an individual craftsman.

Of all the verbal art forms employed by the Tiv, such as singing, story-telling, and proverbs, the last are the most consistently used in everyday situations. Elders today often converse by means of proverbs to prevent young listeners from understanding what they are talking about, for many youngsters have not learned the use of proverbs because they have been to school or away from home for extended periods and have thus lost touch with ‘archaic’ usages.

Proverbs are employed in a variety of situations: to control activities without the use of force, as devices for shaming, for getting out of difficult situations without losing face, as a means of praise, in prophetic utterances, and as general explanations for that sphere of Tiv environment which is beyond comprehension, especially illness or ‘acts of God’.