I teach literature. That's easy for me. Take someone else's work and talk about it.

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

There is that great proverb - that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It's not one man's job. It's not one person's job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail - the bravery, even, of the lions.

It is not quite true to say that I am not an advocate of writing in African languages. What I think is, one has to think about what is practicable.

Ogbuef Ezedudu,who was the oldest man in the village, was telling two other men when they came to visit him that the punishment for breaking the Peace of Ani had become very mild in their clan. "It has not always been so," he said. "My father told me that he had been told that in the past a man who broke the peace was dragged on the ground through the village until he died. but after a while this custom was stopped because it spoiled the peace which it was meant to preserve.

The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look.