It was a Tuesday afternoon. 28th of August, 2018 in Nigeria. The sun's brightness and hotness was at what I'll conclude was it's peak. My legs were burning inside of my white sneakers. My eyes were annoyingly dizzy from lack of adequate sleep from the previous night and had become heavy after two hours of commencing the journey. I guess they wanted to be closed so badly, after I had unsuccesfully tried all imaginations in my head to keep them closed the previous night. I did succeed in keeping them closed while resting my head on the edge of the third row. But, they ached alongside my head when the bus jerked uncontrollably at every untarred parts of the high way.
I was seated second from the left in the back row of the vehicle. The irony was that in all my life, I've always nurtured this bad omen in sitting at the back of a bus. The bad omen is so morose its better kept a secret. So forgive me for deciding to keep it a secret. That morning though, like anyone else who resigns to fate when he or she can do nothing about it, I accepted mine long before I had complained to the most mysterious close friend of mine about the back seat and he advised; in his exact words, "its not always going to be what you like. Its going to be what God is planning for you"
After four uncomfortable hours in the back with a pressing need to pee, the driver finally stopped and lots of people alighted; the boys rushing out first and I had to go with two girls to the back of some little wild growing grasses on the opposite part of the road. I bent and my waist creaked. I felt alarmed. Walking back to the bus reminded me of how disgusting maggots crawl around in any decayed food. Could it be my, maybe signs of early adulthood or old age? Urgh!
The bus finally arrived an untarred road, that led to another narrower untarred road at the left, where plastic buckets, white plastic canvas and other plastic necessities for camp were bought and sold. Some of us in the bus contemplated buying while just two persons did buy.
The police women searched our boxes for sharp objects and we trodded on to get a mattress, hostel space, a place to open or register an account ( can't quite remember the exact, I only remember doing it correctly under my most intense pressure and stress), then went to collect my NYSC kit which were all oversized. Precisely XL in contrast to the Medium size I had filled in some form preceeding that day.
I had to do what I've always dreaded most in my little years on earth. Wait at the point of entry, barred by an utterly dark lady soldier who I assumed must have engaged in uncountable fights with older boys while a teenager, into where the NYSC kits were given. I had to shout out in a hawk-like manner, offering to exchange my limousine sized boots for anyone with larger feet who owned a smaller size and wanted a larger one. I did that alongside the bargain for amending my similarly oversized jacket and trouser.
It had to be minutes past 6 p.m when I and a fellow corp member gave up to go buy bathing buckets with a nice lady who got automatically rude when I went back minutes later to complain to her that I had paid and forgotten to pick the bucket. She declared in Igbo dialect that it was not her fault I forgot it. I begged, swore and even yelled, slightly though, that I really had paid and only forgot it. I was already at the brink of tears before she irritatingly removed a bucket and yanked it at me. Normally, that would have been enough to get me sullen and moody but I was too overwhelmed by exhaustion to even think twice about it.
I had noodles with pepper which unusually kept hurting only at the tip of my lips, had my bathe in a bathroom that describing here might give you nightmares and went to bed on my upbunk where my face felt like it was been fryed for some canibal celebration. That was because of all the newly hung mosquito nets which had not even been put under the sun or washed atleast, to lessen the mosquito-killing-effects in them.
...and Today! I sincerely can not remember how the little sleep I got came but I do remember waking up at 12:00 a.m and remaining awake until 02:25 a.m when everyone was out to bath! The parade commandants were out at 05:00 a.m yelling and screaming at us to jug out in our white uniforms!
From my knees to my feet felt like it was going to decay. And the briefest summary of our conversations with the soldiers were:
ARMY MAN: (Thundering loudly and mostly inaubly) You have to get it together!
PROSPECTIVE CORP MEMBERS: ( Shouting in unison) Yes sir!
ARMY MAN: (More loudly) "I will not beg you to get it together!
PROSPECTIVE CORP MEMBERS: (Still in unison but sparingly interrupted by short laughs and giggles) Yes sir!
But in all of that, I had time to take some shots for my post here😉
So, Cheers to every prospective corp member and anyone else who ever served and never allowed the stress to be seen at all in the pictures. You don't need any role model from an American movie to emulate. Keep the hardwork going. Because you are, yes you! You are the hero of your life!! Definitely with God's boundless grace!!!
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