Old Thots on Service Year

This is one of the rare nights,when we are gifted with light where I am doing my youth service.Phcn is a small god here and you do not waste whatever time they have decided to give you light.Here I am,having ironed all i could possibly iron;my phone is charged to the brim and i even removed the battery and put it back so that it could fill any small space left in the battery.At times we go three days without light,often times,a week. Due to this,i have not been able to spend a weekend in town.I always plan to do but when its friday,i just pack a bag and find somewhere to go.Am glad for the light tonite,its the first time this month that i would be using my fan,laptop,iron and blogging from home.

MY NYSC EXPERIENCE SO FAR

What exactly is Youth Service all about?After struggling through so many lectures,cranky and overbearing lecturers;you make me go to a camp,where the soldiers take delight in visiting the sins of their leaders on us.They claim it is a paramilitary training.Is Nigeria going to war?Are all able youths been recruited?Why don't they carry those idle miscreants or AREA boys and take them for paramilitary training?why is it those of us that have spent years waiting to start a job and fend for ourselves that get to waste a whole year? You would even think they would take good care of us..nope..in camp we lived in terrible conditions.A secondary school hastily turned to camp was our lodging(Only God knows where they packed the students to for the three weeks).We were regularly attacked in the female hostel by the indigenes,especially after we had been paid allowances.By allowance,i mean bicycle allowance and all those measly allowances.I dint even deign it fit to go the dinning,but those who ate camp food rarely had anything good to say.Either the stew was wack or the bread small or the rice clumpy..it was always one bad meal after the other. The training was fun initially,i mean i marched back in my secondary school days,am a sportswoman..i jog,play lawn tennis and volleyball;as a matter of fact i singlehandedly played all my platoon games,until i fell ill and they lost.Training got sour around the second week when it seemed we were always been punished for one thing or the other,especially when the (handsome)commandant felt like.I had all sort of sicknesses in the second week so it became easy for me to escape the drills.I had malaria,nasal infection,i couldnt go to the toilet(which wasn't a toilet per say,but the bush);i began to dread the sound of the bingle,bungle or whatever they call it that they blow to wake us up:lets just say it was a terrible time. The nights were easier as a lot of my school mates were in the same camp with me..I had plenty of my friends too;Eni Ife,Damilola,Tbells,Femi..i made new friends..Wasted,Bugzy,T.P and a host of people and hanging out at the mammy market was fun;I could equate it to being at Reloaded or any other club..We had the guiness stand where we got all our drinks..since the water there had a horrible taste,coke became water,smirnoff was doing the work of coke..most of us developed a higher alchohol tolerance cos there was nothing else to take.The dj was not too good,i think he only had about 2 or 3 cds;but Timaya had just released his album and we didnt mind hearing it over and over. My platoon leader was 'Action'. A short but very agile soldier.His assistant Oga Bello,is what i would refer to as Babyface Aboki.He pronounced his f as p and the guy who dared to correct spent a good while in the guard room.I enjoyed my platoon cos it was just fun and we really never did so much.I was nicknamed Jamaica,immediately i joined because of my dreadlocks.The first person i met in my platoon was Shamishu,short for Shamshudeen i guess.He was a naughty nuisance,he used to send a boy out to buy him six cans of heineken everyday,he smoked much and struck me as a "rich yaro".He had a friend Yusuf,that was so tall and had long feet,he definately did not get his size in the jungle boots.One of my room mates really like him but she found out that Yusuf had started marriage rites before coming to camp;with that long feet,i pity the girl who gets him(if you know what i mean). All in all,camp was fun and i really felt bad and empty the day we all left because i had come across a lot of people with different backgrounds,upbringing,beliefs and behaviours. I had made friends and of course pissed off some people.I had a chubby toaster,who chained smoke, that dogged my footsteps around camp.i had a wonderful guy that supported me from home and gave me a wonderful surprise even when i was in camp.I moved closer to my friends.I was almost too popular cos of my hairdo,even though i wanted to lay low.I finished all my man'o'war tasks and walked to and fro during endurance trek(my feet can still tell the tale).It is,despite all odds;an experience i won't mind repeating again.Corper Wi oh