Do you think anything ever changes, Salazar asked. That we can make a difference? That we will become a better species? I don’t know, I’m not sure if… - Chris Abani

There had been many such experiments when he worked in South Africa, in Vlakplaas, a notorious apartheid death camp.

He stared at the city, half slum, half paradise. How could a place be so ugly and violent yet beautiful at the same time? he wondered. He hadn’t known about the poverty and violence of Lagos until he arrived. It was as if people conspired with the city to weave a web of silence around its unsavoury parts.

“blacks. As in any free market, the coloreds were the middle classes, as it were—those who would give their lives to maintain the status quo, a life they knew they could never improve but which had meaning only because there were those who suffered worse; that in fact, a larger population suffered worse.