Asagai: I LIVE THE ANSWER!

(Pause.)

In my village at home it is the exceptional man who can even read a newspaper -- or who ever sees a book at all...

I will go home and much of what I will have to say will seem strange to the people of my village -- But I will teach and work and things will happen, slowly and swiftly. At times it will seem that nothing changes at all -- and then again -- the sudden dramatic events which make history leap into the future. And then quiet again. Retrogression even. Guns, murder, revolution. And I even will have moments when I wonder if the quiet was not better than all that death and hatred. But I will look about my village at the illiteracy and disease and ignorance and I will not wonder long. And perhaps -- perhaps I will be a great man -- I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of truth and find my way always with the right course -- and perhaps for it I will be butchered in my bed some night by the servants of empire...

Or perhaps I shall live to be a very old man, respected and esteemed in my new nation -- And perhaps I shall hold office and this is what I'm trying to tell you, Alaiyo, perhaps the things I believe now for my country will be wrong and outmoded, and I will not understand and do terrible things to have things my way or merely to keep my power. Don't you see that there will be young men and women, not British soldiers then, but my own black countrymen -- to step out of the shadows some evening and slit my then useless throat? Don't you see, they have always been there -- that they always will be? And that such a thing as my own death will be an advance? They who might kill me even -- actually replenish all that I was.

- A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. Act 3 Scene 2.

(One day, I shall wake up at 6.55 am, and not sleep, at 6.55am.

Till then, goodnight my dear friends. Study hard! I hold you all in my dreams.

I will cover the cold shivering ones, kiss the frowning worried foreheads, kiss the tears away, and frighten the ones who irritate me with big bad wolves.)