Mangu, Plateau State

NYSC Orientation Camp

In the Miss NYSC Pageantry that held on the night of my last Saturday in camp, a day that I now feel was my least favourite day of the 3 week experience, one of the contestants was asked what day the orientation camp officially opened and the corps members sworn in. Her reply, the 27th of March, was wrong because although the official day corpers were expected to report to camp was the 27th, the camp wasn’t actually pronounced open till the 29th. An understandable mistake on her part because by the 29th, camp had already made such a jarring impression on me in comparison to my otherwise comfortable middle class civilian life.

On the 29th, the day of swearing in ceremony, we (corps members) spent around four hours under the sun after three and half hours of standing in the almost intense Mangu morning cold.(at least by my standard. In the latter days, the cold was treacherous even for me) Fours hours of the sun beating hard on my skin so I could eventually render three hearty cheers to the special guest of honour, The Governor of Plateau state, ably represented by a man of less importance. As an indicator of how highly we( corps members) were considered by the officials of the Government we were expected to serve, not a single one of the invited dignitaries showed up. They were all ‘ably’ represented by someone else while I stood (in person) wearing undersized clothes.

Undersized Spiral

NYSC provided all corps members with the following items as part of the NYSC kit:-

• Two white t-shirts
• A crested vest
• Two pairs of white shorts
• Two pairs of white socks
• One pair of white sneakers
• One pair of jungle boots
• A khaki jacket and pair of khaki trousers.

Not one of mine fit me! Not a single one of the above items given to me wasn’t comically smaller than my measurement. After a series of switches with other people, I had khaki’s that looked only slightly less ridiculous than the ones originally given to me. In the process of switching, I also managed to give five other people their sizes in footwear while i remained with two pairs of shoes too small for my feet to even squeeze into. By the end of camp, I had given both my sneakers and jungle boots to people who could use them so that i was left with none.

I am 6 feet and 5 inches tall with a foot size of 48(US standard) so I almost want to understand the folks at NYSC not having stuff that fit me except (and this is the problem) they asked me for my size when I filled my application so WHAT — THE — ACTUAL — HELL. Filling in my measurement only acted to produce a false sense that I was actually being catered for, that they would actually try to make sure my needs were met. At the end of the day, we were given whatever random kit was closest to reach. After my initial collection, I went back to my platoon (campers are split into 10 platoons for the sake of pointless competition) leader to ask if I could get jungle boots in a bigger size. I wasn’t being greedy, I asked for size 45 so I could at least squeeze my feet into the shoes and bare the pain but I came away from that with disappointment. So as it were, I was wearing undersized khakis on the day we got sworn in. I was supposed to wear my jungle boots but seeing as i hadn’t worn size 43 since I was in junior secondary school, that didn’t happen and i wore the white sneakers I had brought along with me from home.

End of spiral

The representative of the governor gave a forgettable speech and so did the other speakers of the day. The only person’s whose speech wasn’t quite as forgettable was that of the state coordinator. Don’t get any crazy ideas, it wasn’t memorable because of it’s content, it was memorable because it refused to end. There were at least five instances in which he proclaimed that this was his final point and then proceeded to make another point afterwards. He repeated a similar fit on the day before we passed out of camp when he gave his final address. During his speech, many people fainted (or pretended to) and i couldn’t blame them. I was hoping for my body to faint as well because i hadn’t had an actual meal since Tuesday night that week (and this was Friday) but instead my body remained gallant. I truly felt betrayed.

Later that day, sometime around 4, we returned out to start parade practice (you know, left right, about turn, attention. That type of stuff. Truly exciting shit.) The weird thing about the parade is that I almost enjoyed it. I mean, i hadn’t marched since primary school. It was a little pleasing to be doing it with so much seriousness. As a bonus, my platoon commander (the soldier assigned to my platoon) was a pretty chilled guy. So yea… i almost had fun then suddenly we were asked to make lines platoon by platoon which was weird but not too weird. We just stood there and no one really noticed that the soldiers were moving around a little suspiciously. Minutes later, we were asked to sit down on the floor. Mind you, we were wearing our white kits and the floor in question was a dirt pitch.

Mini spiral on white kits

Who the hell was responsible for deciding that the best colour for a shirt in camp was white!? And who had the brilliant idea to make everything else the same colour!? What even the hell!?

UGHHHHHHHHH

End of mini spiral

Some of us hesitated but when a soldier comes and shouts your head out, you sort of just obey. We have all seen soldiers beat the crap out of people and although that never happened in camp, no one really tried to find out if it would. On the floor now and wondering what was going on, pairs of soldiers took charge of different platoons and what followed was the biggest display of frog jumps i had ever seen.

We were all punished.

I am not sure how it went in other platoon but here’s how it went for mine. First we had to do frog jumps back and forth. Which we did laughing for a bit until it was no longer funny. Next we rolled on the floor (you read that right.) Then we did frog jumps but in one place. The soldier in charge of our punishment would blow a whistle and we would go down, then blow again and we would return up. My thighs hurt for the next two day (longer than it did after my longest run till date, 15km) After frog jumps, we did push ups. I was exhausted when we stopped. Only then were we offered an explanation. Apparently we had made too much noise during the swearing-in ceremony but that was only one part of it. We had also been crossing the gutter (yup you read that right)

Spiral on rules

One of the camp’s most paramount rules was that we don’t cross the gutters. There were gutters along the sides of the roads in our camp and they were built in a way that it was actually super easy to miss them, especially at night, especially if you were absentmindedly talking to your friends. Between Wednesday night and Friday morning, two people were rushed to the clinic because they had fallen into the gutters. One person incurred a deep cut while the other got a fracture. The camp officials needed us to stop crossing the gutters because we were making them look bad. People didn’t stop so the soldiers had to take action.

Another rule that was important for some reason was that we run between any two points. For some reason, soldiers hated us looking so relaxed as we walked from the hostel to the hall that they felt the need to blow whistles into our ears and shout that we double up. Double up otondo.

Next rule: Do not pass short cuts. One morning, after I had been jarred awake at 4 by soldiers who I was now convinced hated sleep, I made my way to the mosque while the other corpers headed to the parade ground. The path to the mosque kind of breaks away from the main road at a point and that breakaway could also serve as a short cut to the parade ground. But i was going to the mosque so i broke away and this unnecessarily loud soldier blew his whistle and told me not to pass short cut. I tell him that i am not, i am going to the mosque. He repeats the short cut accusation so i point out to him that this is the way to the mosque and point at the sign that literally says ‘This way to mosque”. But of course I lost that battle and took the long way to the parade ground and then walked all the way back to the mosque. I really wanted to sleep #stressed.

There are other rules but let’s stop here and stay on track with my narrative

End of spiral

After the punishment, the camp commandant took to the podium and told us this was their way of welcoming us to camp and that we should never disobey any of the rules unless we wanted to lose feeling in our legs (too late.) All of this happened on the 29th of March. It was definitely the most stressful day of camp but my least favourite day is the last Saturday which by contrast was significantly less stressful in the following ways.

I didn’t have to wake up at 4.

I didn’t have to stand in the cold for 3 and half hours.

We didn’t have the to do morning drills.

It was carnival day so we were allowed to wear whatever albeit for a couple of hours. I watched other people wear agbada and white shirts with cool designs. Guess what i wore… my white shirt with the sweatpants i wore under my shorts on a normal day.

In the evening we had the pageantry; Miss NYSC and Cute and Cooperate (lol ikr) and that was somewhat entertaining i guess.

Essentially, i had no reason to not like the least stressful day of camp. I had four days left and i would never see any of these people again and i could return to my comfortable middle class life.

For most of the first couple days in camp, i was alone. I left my room by myself, went to the parade ground myself, sat by myself in the lecture hall, ate in market by myself and read a book by myself in the evening when we were having social activities. On this Saturday, I was alone as well. Basically same routine as normal. I didn’t hang out with anybody, just moved around camp by myself and I realized i didn’t want to be alone. It wasn’t the loneliness that i disliked, it was that there were people i’d much rather have been with. I had made friends and in four days i’d have to say good bye to them. I would miss camp…

Anticipation

Getting to camp was unnecessarily stressful. I couldn’t get a flight directly to Jos because they were all fully booked so I had to jump on the first flight to Abuja, which i almost missed. For some reason i thought my 6 o clock flight was for 7 and got to the airport what I thought was 70 minutes early. I eventually got on board my plane and was in Abuja by 7 and remained there till 1 (long story.) Took a vehicle to Marban Jama (no idea if that’s spelt right) just outside Jos town and then another vehicle to camp. Arrived at 7pm and started registration immediately. Got a bed space in a hostel that i shared with 109 other men (i counted) and slept peacfu — — woke up at 3am to go and queue for water to bath.

The question i got asked leading up to camp was if i was excited about the experience and my answer was ‘Why the hell would i be?’ Literally no reason for me to want to do this and I like adventure. Part of my ideas of fun is to spend hours walking up a big rock and then spend more hours walking down because #adventure (if you want to take me to do something adventurous, now is your chance to reach out to me so i can start saving.) I was looking forward to meeting new people because that’s another thing i like doing. There were going to be over two thousand people in camp and maybe there were 100 cool people among them which meant i had a small chance of running into at least one of them and i was looking forward to that. In retrospect, I am pretty sure i met the coolest person ever in camp but i am not going to name drop anyone.

So starting camp, i wasn’t looking forward to most of it. Wasn’t looking forward to waking up at 4am or marching or sitting in lectures or doing man o war drills or taking any pictures of me doing any of the above things. First day of camp and i had to wake up at 3am to get water so i could have a bath, which proved futile because i didn’t get water till 5 and that’s when the soldiers came to chase us to the parade ground so i couldn’t have said bath and when I came back to my room at 7:30, the water(and Jos morning breeze) was so cold that I needed 10 minutes to mentally prepare myself (i paid 50 naira for a bucket of hot water for the rest of camp.) I was ready to go back home.

An Average Day in Camp

Wake up at 4am. I was up minutes before 4 on most days but thats when the first beagle sound went off. 4;30 is when i left my room and headed to the mosque where i was till 5:30 before joining the rest of camp on the parade ground doing something called morning meditation (which is what adults call it when they have to stand in assembly like primary school children) that lasted till 6:30. 6:30 to 7:30 was morning drill time before we got to go for breakfast. I typically went to have my bath before going for my own breakfast. Breakfast ended at 9am and lectures (aka unauthorized siesta) began. The most notable in our lecture series is something called SAED — Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development. The idea being that this lecture series was to teach corps members useful skills to enable them become self employed because the Nigerian leaders had failed them and there were no jobs (but nobody mentioned the second part.) The problem was, they weren’t teaching us actual useful things (in my opinion) and they were trying to somehow teach us how to build bags and shoes and how to become automobile mechanics in five days. The people leading the classes were also pretty interesting (for lack of a better word.) For instance, the guy that led the art and design class was really just someone that printed designs on shirts. And he didn’t even print the designs, he drew them on because apparently that’s the best way to make millions (I might be over ridiculing this so please forgive me.) Lectures generally ended at 2pm and we got to do lunch till about 3:30 then parade. After parade, we had sports till maybe 6 and supper at around 6:30. Social activities like the pageantry, singing, comedy and cultural dance start around 7 (officially but never really got going till past 8)

Throughout my first week of camp. I spent the social activities part of the day reading one of the books I brought along with me to camp (you know because I had no friends. ) During the second week, I was more actively part of the events (watching) going as far as to enjoy it (yup. I enjoyed something about camp. Shocked me) but that was hugely due to the company I had.

The company I had in Camp

I met quite a number of people and knew maybe two dozen people by their first name (not counting people I knew before camp) which is pretty impressive if I do say so myself. The number of people that were actually my friends is significantly less though and of the number, maybe five people stand out, three of which i met in the space of two days and became my favourite part of camp.

Needless to say, they were all female (because i am an ashawo lol jkjk)

I met MI first. Those are her initials which also happen to be mine. it was during volleyball practice and she could really serve.

Volleyball spiral

There were two main sport competitions for corp members. Football for men and volleyball for women. Blatant gender discrimination I know. Anyways, I haven’t played football in something around seven years so I didn’t have any business there. On the other hand I liked volleyball, I can sort of play it and I like coaching female teams because I sort of know how to do it. So that’s what I did for my platoon (let them not say I didn’t participate in anything). I coached the female volleyball team and we lost our first match but that’s not the point 😂. We played well and I actually felt really good being a part of the team. We qualified for the quarterfinal on the grounds that of all the losers we were the best. Not being picky about these things , we trained for our next match and won. Making it to the semi finals where we lost again and were knocked out finally. It was fun plus I got better at playing the game again which I hadn’t played in quite some time for fear of being laughed at.

End of spiral

My relationship with MI was unlikely but not the most unlikely. She was Muslim and she was in my platoon so I was going to see her a lot. We even had a particular day where we spent 9 hours together during my second time of being on security duty (spiral coming soon). She made it a little less tiring. She’s one of those super reserved people that avoids eye contact which meant I spent all the time we were together looking directly into her eyes (because I’m awful.). She talks in this weird way where she stresses words in all the places I’m not used to words being stressed and I actually like it. I have decided that she talks like a Hindu which happens to be a language she likes. She lives in Nassawara and I can’t imagine what on Earth would have facilitated me meeting someone that lives in Nassawara so thank you NYSC. I, unfortunately, didn’t take any pictures with her so…

The next significant person I met was Tochi who I actually met through a mutual friend that’s not even in the country. She put us in the same group chat and that’s how we first spoke. Then we met in person and found out we had been on the same flight from Lagos (remember that my flight that I almost missed?) Tochi is the absolute cutest little person I have ever met 😂 and was actually pretty easy to talk to plus our conversations encouraged me to ramble and I like to ramble. We have the same interests professionally and I guess its kind of unfair to say it was random because the person that introduced us knew we had the same interests.

Here’s a cool picture of us together

This last significant person I met in camp was actually super random and I’m going to tell (part of) the story.

As established, we had lectures at 9 in camp and for the first week, I was by myself. Beginning of the second was the same and this day I just went into the hall and sat down by myself in some random place and all was well with the world. The PRO (who led all our events) came into the hall and we all got up to say the NYSC anthem to start the event and that’s when I saw Tosin. I liked her skin (and this is the best way I can describe whatever it was that piqued my interest in her. Every now and then I see someone that I immediately think I’d like and I do this weird thing where I go and disgrace myself in front of them and that’s what I did) I got up from my seat and sat in the closest chair to her I found. We shared maybe four sentences for the rest of that first lecture and when we were switching lectures and everyone in the hall was moving around rowdily, the two of us just sat there and… well… talked. The rest of the story is none of your business but she’s pretty awesome ( I’m saying this because she’s like a marginally cooler female version of me. ) The conversations we had and getting to know her started to prompt me to think more consciously about things I haven’t thought about in a while. Like my future. Here's a picture we took together which is actually the first picture I took in camp

Honourable mentions include Peju who can speak 5 foreign languages (Francais, Espanol, Portuguese, Japanese and Dutch) which I have to say I am thoroughly in awe of. Her and her boyfriend are actually the coolest couple I’ve met in a really long time. Hope has an amazing voice and won the singing competition. Nnena is tall and reminds me of a child. Precious and Esther are the first friends I made in my platoon. Emmanuel is pretty cool but we didn’t actually establish any relationship. There are more names that aren’t coming to mind now and that’s because I was lame and didn’t collect anyone’s numbers. I collected literally only one person’s number and that person is already in this article.

The point is that on Saturday when I felt sad, it was because I had so thoroughly enjoyed meeting the people above that I didn’t want to miss them. I hadn’t even really gotten to know them yet.

Other Stories

In camp, each platoon gets one day when they are on duty. Meaning that platoon is in charge of cooking for that day, in charge of sanitation and in charge of security. My platoon was on duty twice and twice I was put on security. The first time, I stood under the sun for the majority of six hours. Doing what you ask? Nothing. Just standing. After some hours, the soldiers closest to me invited me into the generator house to sit because the sun was so hot, a gesture I found to be really nice (i was still about five days into camp and still hated everything.) While I was sitting here with the soldiers, one of them (I shall call Yusuf) told an interesting story about a girl he once liked. As you might have induced, Yusuf is Muslim (at least by name) and the girl in question was Christian. This section is about stories of other people that I stumbled onto while at camp. Yusuf’s story is that this girl that he fancied refused to give him any mind except he followed her to church. The girl must have been really hot because he followed her and in the church he was prayed for and the pastor blessed their union and so finally the girl agreed that she would marry him. In retrospect, Yusuf considered that at the time, he wasn’t even going to a mosque and here this girl wanted him to follow her to church. How perplexing. He is currently chasing a different girl.

On my second security duty, I was assigned to the entrance gate where I (and three colleagues) had the responsibility of inspecting all visitors of the camp. The person in charge of us was a fellow I shall now refer to as Dele. Dele is a trained bomb disposal police officer and during my 9-hour long shift, he talked about many things, one of which was how he got into the police force. Dele was one of those people that disregarded the police and probably still does a little. He does not go the village in his police uniform so that people don’t know that he is one. He was supposed to go to the university, in fact, he received admission but unfortunately couldn’t pay at the time. That’s when he took to farm work and started cultivating crops. He did this till he could save enough money to pay his tuition and then he returned to the school he received admission. They turned him back. He really wanted to go to school but there was nothing he could do then. Around the same time, someone in his community that was like an influential government official began to make mention of openings in the Nigerian police. Dele didn’t apply for the police because he didn’t want to be in the police. His mother, on the other hand, wanted him to do something with his life and she applied on his behalf and the rest they say is history. He got the opportunity to learn as part of his police service so all is well that ends well I suppose. He owns a farm now and when he is at home, he tills the land and cultivates tomatoes. I also asked him what type of training he received to become a bomb disposal officer to which he laughed. He showed me a cool instrument, that apparently cost 5 million naira, that was essentially like a metal detector on super steroids.

The last interesting story I got to hear was that of the man that drove me from Jos to Abuja on my way back to Lagos. That morning, I woke up, said my prayer, had my bath, put on clothes and left my hotel without knowing jack shit about Jos. I entered the first keke I found and somehow figured my way around the city till I got to the park which is where I met — let’s call him Baba Chisom. He drove me and my friends (half of which I knew since secondary school and half of whom I literally met the day before ) from our hotel in Jos to the airport in Abuja. Nice guy. I found out from him that he had studied Civil Engineering. He served in one of the Northern states and had practised as a civil engineer for seven years. He even had his own firm. The obvious question was ‘why was he now driving people for a living?’

‘There are no opportunities anymore. No work”

The company he practised at for seven years simply let him go and since the new government came into power, he hadn’t been getting any more clients. He couldn’t just sit at home waiting for work so he sold his two small cars and bought a Volkswagen Sharan and started driving between Jos and Abuja.

Funny Stories

Okay, I’m finally coming to the end of this long rant about camp. This is the last heading and it’s about random short things that I should probably find funny now. First is that one week into camp, I misplaced the key to the padlock I used on my travelling bag. I eventually had to break into my own bag. It’s funny now in a way but at the time… At the time it was funny too because I am just foolish.

One of my shorts split open at the seams and I had no idea. I found out randomly when I sat down on the floor and opened my leg in the normal yoga manner I had become accustomed to. I looked down in between my legs and saw my boxers. It was so awkward and I spent the rest of that day wondering how long it had been torn for and who had seen my ‘monster inc’ boxers.

Stepping away from camp, on the drive from Abuja to Jos, I noticed a two-kilometre stretch of road where someone had patched all the small potholes and counted them. There were about 120 potholes in those two kilometres and the entire road was essentially like that. I hope that gives you a fair sense of how the road is.

This one is kind of sad funny and it’s about my hostel. It’s divided into two, the first part is about the toilets.

My hostel had six toilets but only four of them actually worked which isn’t great because we were over one hundred but I don’t think it warranted some of the crazy things that happened. For instance, someone pooped in the bathroom… twice. Someone pooped inside his white shirt and left it in the toilet. The toilet was repeatedly messed up so badly that the cleaners had to report to the officials. I was very perplexed.

The second part is about stealing. On the first night in camp, I purchased a bucket and bailer. That bucket was stolen from me within a week. I waited for it to be returned but that didn’t happen. So I bought another bucket and a bailer. And this one disappeared the next day. It eventually showed up but without the bailer. The bucket disappeared again about 5 days to the end of camp at which point I couldn’t be arsed to get another one. But that’s not the real story about stealing. In my hostel, two phones and one watch were stolen. It got us into a lot of trouble. On more than one occasion, a soldier woke me from sleep in regards to the stolen phone. On my sad Saturday, a soldier woke us up at 6 and brought us all out and sat us outside in the cold (by this time the cold had become unbearable. It rained every day for a week straight) then one by one we all went in and brought out all our luggage which were then searched. The phone didn’t show up so a different soldier came and laid way too many curses on the thief. Needless to say that the phone was promptly returned. The watch remained missing until a different soldier came and shocked as all awake at 1 am ( I couldn’t sleep back that day. ) He proclaimed that he knew everything about everything and proved it by telling us about someone whose family was being chased by villagers. The boy who happened to be my bunkmate confirmed that he was the only graduate in his family (I just realized why I couldn’t sleep back. ) The wristwatch showed up that same morning.

All of the soldiers in camp had their thing. Some of those things included the following phrases

“i won’t disappoint you”

“i will shock you”

“winch”

*the sound of a whistle*

“rugurugu desu” which I learnt means scatter scatter.

The last funny story is about the Driver that drove me from Marban Jama to camp. He is probably the most expressive driver I have ever seen in that he moved his body with the car. He swayed left when turning left and right when turning right and jumped in his seat with every pothole he entered (he did a lot of jumping in those 45 minutes.) The funny part is I don’t think he was doing it to amuse us, I think that’s how he is naturally.

This 21-minute article still doesn’t feel like it talks even marginally about everything but I’m going to have to stop here. If you are a follower of this publication, you’d have noticed I haven’t published anything in 5 weeks. This is one of the reasons why. Let me leave you guys with a picture a photographer took without my permission on the last day.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end.

Plug (Cool stuff on the internet)

I have’t had much of a chance to scour the internet in the last month but here is a link to an article a friend of mine wrote about making Lagos a better place to live in. And another one

Support

Please be a nice person and support my dream by sharing this post on twitter, facebook, whatsapp, instagram, snapchat, reddit and everywhere you can paste this link. You can also simply send the link to one friend. Just one friend. If you have a medium account, please clap for this post, follow the publication and comment below.