In almost all cases I came across, headman and elders were young or middle-aged men. Senior and outstanding men did not hold office themselves, though very often their sons and younger brothers might.
All villagers must also by law appoint a watchman, a bekci; he is a sort of policeman, supposed to act under the orders of the headman. He is also expected by the authorities to act as a messenger, and is continually going back and forth between the District Office and his village. He is chosen by the headman, for a year at a time, on so lowly a salary (T.L. 300-100, £37 10.. downwards, .in 1949-52) that only the poorest and most incompetent villagers will normally take on the office. The watchman in most villages acts as a servant to the headman, and is often to be found making his coffee, running his errands or even chopping his wood. The Sakaltutan watchman collected his dues in kind himself, household by household.
Apart from this legally required set of institutions, every village has a number of its own officers and servants to meet the needs of a farming community, mostly herdsmen. Two or more special watchmen are usually appointed to guard the harvest for the village as a whole. These are expected to, and do, run foul of the herders, whose animals frequently maraud the standing crops. Elbashï also appointed two men to supervise the allocation of water during the months of June and July when demand is high and supplies are low.
Most of these are chosen by village elders, among whom the current headman has the most say. But the shepherds are appointed by leading sheep-owners. All are paid directly in cash or kind, household by household (p. 58).
The village is then a corporation, with both official and unofficial servants, and an official and in a sense an unofficial income. The state-imposed general village fund is clearly alien, and so far the traditional arrangements for traditional village servants have not been brought into the new scheme. The traditional method has the advantages that village servants are responsible for collecting their own dues, and that people pay in proportion to their use of the services.
People still regard themselves as dependent politically on the