A Man of the People Read Online Free PDF

come to the nursing School. We danced twice, then I suggested we took a walk away from the noisy highlife band and she readily agreed. If I had been left to my own devices nothing might have happened that day. But, no doubt without meaning to, Elsie took a hand in the matter. She said she was thirsty and I took her to my rooms for a drink of water. She was one of those girls who send out loud cries in the heat of the thing. It happened again each time. But that first day it was rather funny because she kept calling: 'Ralph darling.' I remember wondering why Ralph. It was not until weeks later that I got to know that she was engaged to some daft fellow called Ralph, a medical student in Edinburgh. The funny part of it was that my next-door neighbour---an English Honours student and easily the most ruthless and unprincipled womanizer in the entire university campus---changed to calling me Ralph from that day. He was known to most students by his nickname, Irre, which was short for Irresponsible. His most celebrated conquest was a female undergraduate who had seemed so inaccessible that boys called her Unbreakable. Irre became interested in her and promised his friends to break her one day soon. Then one afternoon we saw her enter his rooms. Our hall began to buzz with excitement as word went round, and we stood in little groups all along the corridor, waiting. Half an hour or so later Irre came out glistening with sweat, closed the door quietly behind him and then held up a condom bloated with his disgusting seed. That was Irre for you---a real monster. I suppose I was somehow flattered by the notice a man of such prowess had taken of Elsie's cry. When I confided to him later that Ralph was the name of the girl's proper boy-friend he promptly changed to calling me Assistant Ralph or, if Elsie was around, simply A. R. Despite this rather precipitous beginning Elsie and I became very good and steady friends. I can't pretend that I ever thought of marriage, but I must admit I did begin to feel a little jealous any time I found her reading and rereading a blue British air-letter with the red Queen and Houses of Parliament stamped on its back. Elsie was such a beautiful, happy girl and she made no demands whatever. When I left the University she was heart-broken and so was I for that matter. We exchanged letters every week or two weeks at the most. I remember during the postal strike of 1963 when I didn't hear from her for over a month I nearly kicked the bucket, as my boy, Peter, would have said. Now she was working in a hospital about twelve miles outside Bori and so we arranged that I should spend my next holidays in the capital and take the bus to her hospital every so often while she would be able to spend her days off in the city. That was why the Minister's offer couldn't have come at a more opportune moment. I had of course one or two bachelor friends in the capital who would have had no difficulty in putting me up. But they weren't likely to provide a guest-room with all amenities. For days after the Minister's visit I was still trying to puzzle out why he had seemed so offended by his old nickname---'M.A. Minus Opportunity'. I don't know why I should have been so preoccupied with such unimportant trash. But it often happens to me like that: I get hold of some pretty inane thought or a cheap tune I would ordinarily be ashamed to be caught whistling, like that radio jingle advertising an intestinal worm expeller, and I get stuck with it. When I first knew Mr Nanga in 1948 he had seemed quite happy with his nickname. I suspect he had in fact invented it himself. Certainly he enjoyed it. His name being M.A. Nanga, his fellow teachers called him simply and fondly 'M.A.'; he answered 'Minus Opportunity', which he didn't have to do unless he liked it. Why then the present angry reaction? I finally decided that it stemmed from the same general anti-intellectual feeling in the country. In 1948 Mr Nanga could admit, albeit light-