Episode 1: the corps story

I always knew that the thing everyone said to corpers was ‘shun!’ And they would say something in return. Something vague and shallow. Something that did not make sense if you really thought about it. I didn’t bother to find out what this reply was. I didn’t need it. No one asked me to ‘shun!’ Till October 2021.

Camp—Nonwa Gbam, Tai.

Dragging my old bag through the gates of the orientation camp, I had just one thing in mind: Evade, evade, evade. The NYSC was just another excuse to pose for pictures, post them with the most ridiculous captions, and have people congratulate you.

“Done and dusted.” “Newest Kopa.”

People found thrill in the weirdest of things – or was it me who was irredeemably weird? I never could tell. They had the brightest smiles as they climbed ropes, squeezed through holes, walked tiny lines, all the while looking up to be sure they were captured. They would spend hours packed in a small space, stuffy with sweat and tired breaths, trying to get the photographers to print their pictures. They would pay to collect them. Crazy stuff. All I saw was wasted money that could have been put to good use, like cold bottles of Coke zero-sugar.

I did not participate in the Man O’war drills. I was in another room, doing a presentation on financial institutions.

Evade

The mornings were cold. You woke up tired. You did not get enough sleep the previous night. You never got enough sleep before the ‘trumpet’ sounded, and you were to appear in white. You would not be caught strolling to the field at 5:30.

“Double up!”

This was difficult, but not as difficult as what came after the prayers and anthems. F*cking parade. First, they said we were to exercise and do these crazy stretches while chanting in the thing that did not make sense. I still hoped, maybe I could get used to this. Then came the most useless practice ever. The one thing that never solved any problem in the billions of years of the world’s existence – marching.

There was no getting used to waking up tired at 5 am and going off to march. God forbid. So, I joined the lectures committee. Evade. This meant every morning, while others were at the parade grounds, we had to set the hall, sit through all the lectures, document them, and pack up after. By the time we were done, the others would have had breakfast.

The afternoons were rough. You had to be out in the sun for hours, listening to soldiers shout something that sounded like “Pre pree, shun!” Those people and shun, though. Then, you were to start marching all over again.

I would not spend hours under the sun, being unproductive, doing ‘pre pre shun’ and marching. God forbid. So, I joined the Financial Inclusion training. Evade. This training started an hour before the afternoon parade and ended an hour after, taking a whopping two hours out of my free time. But if that guaranteed no parade, heck I was down with it.

Nights were for compulsory fun. You had no choice. It did not matter that your eyes were heavy and your head pounded. It did not matter that you were sick and would pass out if someone shook you too hard. You had to sit through the social events, or as they sometimes called it, the parties.

“No be you go tell me wetin I go do,” did not apply here.

In my attempt to evade, I ended up taking on more responsibilities and tasks. I ended up doing the very opposite of what I set out to do. I went days without proper food or rest.

It became obvious that my case wasn’t an unwillingness to get involved, but the need to define what I was doing; the relevance of it. I did not mind the stress, as long as it made sense.

The Girl 1

I found many fascinating characters in camp, and you will get to see more of them in this series. Of course, most of them were female. Boys are oddly rigid, too stiff to be interesting.

I first saw this girl on the day we arrived camp and got registered. You made your first set of friends in the registration hall. They would soon become some forgotten contacts on your phone. “John NYSC.” “Mary Corper.” But you wouldn’t know this at the time.

I do not remember her name, only that Girl could talk. She was the type to whisper something in your ear if someone walked by—something insensitive but f*cking hilarious. Judge her all you want, but you still can’t help but love her. When the platoon officer misused his tenses, I found her looking back, wearing a smirk and face that could not be captured in a thousand words. It was impossible not to laugh. Girl was such a character.

We saw less of each other after registration. We had gotten lost in one thousand, seven hundred and fifty-something others like us. But I saw her, still. This was my specialty. I could see people.

I saw her feign a sprain during the parade. One moment, everyone was standing, completely drained. Someone had just fallen to the ground in a failed attempt to simulate a faint. He was now wiping dirt off his white shorts. We laughed at him.

It hadn’t even been that long when girl dropped to her feet, screamed, and grabbed her ankles. Of course, it was a joke, but unlike the others, hers didn’t end. She went on and on. The Red Cross had to help her to the side, to massage her ankles. Some had begun to wonder out loud if hers was real. Those people did not know Girl like I did. They hadn’t seen her like I had.

The officials turned around and she made a funny face at us. The field erupted in laughter. The very next second, she was wincing in pain. You knew this person was messing with you but you could not push her back into the crowd, because, hell, she was good. That was Girl.

i saw her one morning, as we lined up for breakfast. Her eyes were on my food flask. Need I mention that I had the biggest flask in the entire camp. Yep, I checked. None other came close. My friend, Hope, had told me that you got more food if your flask was big. I’m not sure if that worked. Girl, however, did not look to see who had the flask. She just cracked up and said something to the people around her, and they all laughed out. l wished I had heard her. I bet it was really funny, what she said.

A few days later, she was not at the parade grounds anymore. She was not at the lecture hall either. She had left camp. This would not be unusual, you see. Fun as the story sounds, camp was a whole lot of stress and health issues. Not everyone stayed to see the end of it. I, too, had considered leaving one evening, as I lay, shivering under my wrapper, forcing my burning eyes open to check my watch, knowing that in ten minutes, I had to be up somewhere, speaking, writing. Active, while feeling like my body had been pounded in a mortar, like yam.

As You Were – Ajuwaya!

On this Tuesday morning, we were all kitted. Tired as f*ck. I had just carried over 30 chairs to the hall by myself because the rest of the committee had deserted. It was our last day in camp. My voice was totally gone, and I sounded like papers being rubbed together. My eyes were pale.

“Corpers wee!”

This was one of the first things I discovered here. In camp, they did not ask corpers to shun. They asked us to wee, instead. And we were to reply “waa.”

“Wee wee wee!”

“Waa waa waa!”

Yep, very ignorant. People would smile and chant like it was some revolutionary sh**. But it was okay. People found thrill in the weirdest of things.

And when I got out, and the first woman said, “corper, shun!” I had no idea what to say. I lazily dragged my feet together because I now knew that shun was a call to stand at attention, but this woman was waiting for something else. Something vague and shallow. Something I still did not know, even though I was a corper now.

That night, I asked Odii, “How do you reply when someone says ‘corper, shun?’”
She laughed.

“Ajuwaya!”
Yep, ignorant. I know. But it didn’t have to make sense. You just had to know it.

Written by Di MadWriter

_{The Corps Story is Di MadWriter’s recount of his NYSC experience. Just as with most of his writings, you will find humour, life lessons, and fine storytelling woven into these pieces. All parts of this series are published in the blog section of Direwords}.

_{You can also publish with Direwords by sending us an email at direwordspoetry@gmail.com}