The community.... "The men of Umuofia were prepared to fight to the last. They had no illusions about Obi. He was, without a doubt, a very foolish and self-willed young man. But this was not the time to go into that. The fox must be chased away first; after that the hen might be warned about wandering into the bush." (6)"Obi admitted that his people had a sizable point. What they did not know was that, having labored in sweat and tears to enroll a kinsman among the shining elite, they had to keep him there. Having made him a member of an exclusive club whose members greet one another with 'How's the car behaving?' did they expect him to turn around and answer: 'I'm sorry, but my car is off the road. You see I couldn't pay the insurance premium'? That would be letting the side down in a way that was quite unthinkable. Almost as unthinkable as a masked spirit in the old Ibo society answering another's esoteric salutation: 'I'm sorry, my friend, but I don't understand your strange language. I'm but a human being wearing a mask.' No, these things could not be. Ibo people, in their fair-mindedness, have devised a proverb which says that it is not right to ask a man with elephantiasis of the scrotum to take on smallpox as well, when thousands of other people have not had even their share of small diseases. No doubt it is not right. But it happens. 'Na so dis world be,' they say." (113)
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