Alone, i am nothing. i have nothing.we have power.but we will never know it,we will never see it work.unless we come together to make it work. - Ayi Kwei Armah

Here, educated people use their intelligence to avoid risk, to accumulate power, money, privilege. We call it security. That makes our choices sound less cowardly, not so greedy

In the intervals, between successive layers of distemper, the walls were caressed and thoroughly smothered by brown dust blowing off the roadside together with swirling grit from the coal and gravel of the railroad yard within and behind, and the corners of the walls where people passed always dripped with the engine grease left by thousands of transient hands. Every new coating, then, was received as just another inevitable accretion in a continuing story whose beginnings were now lost and whose end no one was likely to bother about.

Isanusi sees Abena and, thinking she is alone, despairs. When the other 19 members of the community are revealed, Isanusi asks about Tawi and invites everyone to his small shelter. Isanusi asks them about their motivations for returning. They explain that they view their project as the “necessary work of preparation against destruction.