The Soft Stone

Usula announced her acceptance to study Microbiology back in Mannes in line with her father's wish. She had lived with her migrant father in Nova Scotia, Canada all her life and resisted her father's entreaties to study in Mannes until that surprise announcement. But nothing of her nineteen years in Canada prepared her for the strange culture which she would encounter at the University of Mannes under Professor Ozambiya. Ozambiya, UniMannes' renowned Professor of Microbiology never hid the toga of a god which he had come to curry among his students. Nor does he leave anything to the imagination about his detest for the abilities of the opposite sex in serious matters of life to which Microbiology, his area of specialty, belongs. Coming from a free world culture, Usula considered it natural to air her views unfettered in a college class. And that assumption shook the root of Ozambiya's twenty-five-year undisturbed disciplinary core at UniMannes - especially coming, in his words, 'from an uninitiated newcomer, a girl for that matter.' He felt disrespectfully challenged from a source it should never come.