This is the concluding part of the trilogy recounting my
interesting but harrowing NYSC experience at Kogi camp. If you haven’t read the
preceding stories or need a refresher, you must catch up here.
I bounced casually towards the main area of the registration
hall, the room was strewn with broken desks and long benches. I hated to think
it was a classroom. Scores of newcomers (like me) sat around, they had a tired
look about themselves and I wondered how long they had been waiting.
“Who’s in charge here?” I asked no one in particular.
I was obviously still high on Sergeant Nwafor’s words. I
must have cut an intimidating figure (hopefully) because someone responded.
“The officers are on their brunch break, we are waiting for their return”.
The girl who spoke lay on her dusty camp bag and looked like she
had spent a week getting here, maybe on camel via the desert? Her matted dry
hair and harried face did her no justice. I nodded and sat down on one of the
broken form benches.
During that time I took in the view of the camp, it
certainly dulled in comparison to the army boot camp where I had spent the
night before. There was an assembly pavilion, a large training field, several dorm
buildings and corp members already donning white t-shirts and shorts; their
faces a mix of both excitement and uncertainty about what was to come. Not long
afterwards, the officers came back and proceeded to register us.
The first week of camp was alright, we spent the time
getting to know each other and understanding camp rules. The soldiers were not
so forceful then and even the drill exercises were ‘piece of cake’ to me. In
fact, I had joined up with a merry group of boys whose highlight of the day was
hanging out at the mammy market, drinking and making eyes at babes who passed our
table. We were often loud, lawless and quite unpopular among the goody-goody types. But that was in the
first week.
In the second week, things began to change. I didn’t mind being
called an otondo, or showering in the
open fields at night, or taking a dump in the thickets of the bush where
scorpions and other poisonous arachnids dwelled. After all I had attended a
Federal Government boarding school. However what I did hate was being
forcefully woken in the middle of the night, in my boxer shorts for a head
count. I also despised being told to lie down in the sand (in our white
outfits!) or those pointless, interminable seminars we were made to attend…that
was pure torture!
During those seminars, my friends and I would often sneak
off to one of the stalls at the mammy market and spend time there gisting and
drinking till it was over. The owner of the store, a robust Igbira woman did
her best to conceal us from soldiers looking for ‘truant’ otondos. We returned the favour by patronising her stall regularly.
It was a quid pro quo deal and both
sides were satisfied with the arrangement. As a result, it was not uncommon to
find some of us tipsy as early 12pm in the day.
Don’t get me wrong, those trysts were only done to avoid the
annoying seminars (on my part), but when it came to the morning jogs and regular
drills, I was often first in line for the call. Thanks to Sergeant Nwafor, I
had acquired a thirst for adrenaline surge and fitness exercises. By now I had
begun to add more stone to my weight and form to my physique which unknown to
me hadn’t escaped the eyes of my platoon members, hence my nomination for Mr.
NYSC Kabba camp. But that’s a narration for another story…
As fate would have it, one unfortunate afternoon during seminars,
my friends and I were at our usual stall laughing and drinking when Morale
reared his ugly head through the curtains and entered the beer shop.
And I knew immediately that we were- to put it aptly - FUCKED.
Now Morale was a fearsome soldier. No, fearsome was an
understatement, he was terrifying; a bald-headed, 200 stone man of lean muscle
with a penchant for dark shades. Nobody had ever seen his eyes, it was rumoured
that he had none and what lay beneath those dark shades were deep empty
sockets. He had served three tours in Liberia, Sierra Leone and led a team that that thwarted a coup in Equatorial
Guinea, and the multitude of tiny stringed beads around his neck represented
each enemy soldier he had felled. Even while walking, you never wanted to cross
Morale’s path. It was bad luck.
Later, we would discover that unknown to us; Madam Igbira
had gone to the market and left the stall to her teenage son who knew nothing
about our arrangement, hence didn’t warn us about Morale…whom of all the
sixty-something soldiers in camp had to walk into our stall that day.
PAUSE- Take a break- If you've been sitting, maybe now would be the time to stretch.
PART TWO
‘What are you doing here?’ He whispoke; that is when you
speak so softly, it almost sounds like a whisper.
It was the first time I had heard Morale speak and his voice
was laboured. He sounded like someone who had more important things to do in
life than talk.
‘We are drinking sir’. Obviously.
One of us had replied, for lack of what to say. The room was
tense and we weren’t in the best frame of mind. Apparently intoxication and
fear were a bad combination.
Suddenly with a quick swipe of his arm, the bottles and
glasses on our table crashed at our feet in a shattered heap. Contents
included.
We stood up hastily and faced the demon that was before us.
Morale.
There were five of us and one of him. Two of us were taller
than he. And a third was burlier than he.
He immediately spread his legs and stood on the balls of his
feet (that wide part after the toes), such that it looked like he was tiptoeing.
Arms were wide apart too. Fingers spread. I recognised the stance; it was a
typical fighter’s poise for attack. It enabled you spring yourself in leaps and
bounds when faced by attackers. If he were a viper, he might as well be barring
his fangs. He was truly a combat warrior.
But Morale needn’t have bothered; we were too scared to confront
a soldier whose deathly war trophies hung around his neck in hundreds of fine colourful
beads. I was sure he could take on the five of us without breaking a sweat. In
fact, even if we tried, our eye to hand coordination would have failed us,
having had two pints of Gulder Max already.
Five minutes later we were frog-jumping all the way from the
mammy market to the main venue of the seminar. The speaker paused to ‘welcome’ us
and the whole camp seemed to find the spectacle funny. We were asked not to
stop, so we continued, making an example for future truant corp members. By now
our legs had begun to ache and muscles starting to cramp.
After a while, when it looked as if we were about to
collapse, one ‘smart’ soldier thought it was a wise idea to make us lie in the
sand, but not before he splashed water on us.
And that was when I SNAPPED.
I didn’t mind frog-jumping nearly 200 meters, nor the
humiliation of doing it in front of over 3000 other corp-members among whom
were pretty girls I had chyked
previously or intended to. Hell I didn’t even mind doing it for another hour or
so. But to make me lie down in sand, after wetting my clothes, whites for that
matter? It was not going to happen, Combat soldier or not.
It had taken me a whole lot of time to make those whites
shine.
I refused and urged my friends to stand by me. We were all
in this together.
In defiance, I began
to sing the ‘Aluta Continua’ song. A popular student’s song rallying against
oppression and tyranny of any kind:
“A luta continua,
continua, continua…”
I expected my friends, even other corp members to join in
the chorus as was the tradition among Nigerian students but no one did. I had
forgotten that we were no longer students.
Morale began to walk towards us with a belt in his hand. My
friends whom I expected would stand by me quickly fell to the ground. Even the
biggest amongst us was face-deep in wet brown soil and if there was any way he
could burrow further he would have done it.
This is Nigeria. I was on my own.
“Lie flat”. Morale whispered. I couldn’t see his eyes
through those dark shades. All I saw was my reflection. I had come this far.
“No”. I whispered back. For equal effect.
“What did you say?” He asked, shocked. He was obviously used
to having his way and this was a first.
He turned around and looked at the other corp members. Everybody
was watching. I could sense his thoughts. Pride and respect were at stake here
and he didn’t want to lose. It was me or him.
“I will tell you only one more time… Lie down”. The tension
in the air was thick as cold pap.
Sergeant Nwafor flashed before my mind:
You have got grit…I
saw it in you.
If fear and intoxication were a bad combination, try courage,
anger and intoxication. It was a game-changer.
“No!” I whispered. Then I shouted loudly for everybody to hear.
“No! No, I will not lie down!”
Morale grabbed me by my belt and began to whip me. My feet
almost left the ground and in order to maintain balance, I grabbed his waist belt
and we struggled. He was extremely strong but I was tenacious. I held on. However
his whipping got the better of me and when I saw that I was losing the struggle, I
did the quickest thing that came to mind.
I knocked off his shades.
Yes, Morale’s dark shades; his
mojo, his identity. I knocked them off.
At that moment, the earth seemed to stand still. The people
who had been shouting before now were quiet, even a lizard on a stone nearby
paused and raised its head to watch. I had done the one thing nobody had ever
done; I had de-mystified Morale.
In a fit of blind fury, he threw away the belt and pounced
at me. What followed next can only be described as an annihilation. His fists were a blur of blows and punches mostly to my
mid-riff; a rabid dog without restraints. I could hardly get any blows in so I curled up in a foetal position and
held on wishing it would end soon. Fortunately, I was rescued. It took four
hefty soldiers to wrest an angry Morale away from me. And even when they did,
his arms and feet where still flailing wildly in the air.
I was a mess. Thankfully, apart from a few bruises and a
black eye my face was in-tact but my sides were sore and I was asked to report
to the camp infirmary. It would take days to heal.
Without dwelling too much on an already long story, I will
cut some parts. During those days recuperating at the camp infirmary, my
personal healer was a beautiful doctor who was also a corp member and I couldn’t
have healed as fast as I did without her support, physio-therapeutically and
otherwise.
Vicky became my camp girlfriend and managed to get me out of
trouble in many ways than one. They say sometimes a beautiful woman can get you
into trouble, but then it’s a beautiful one that gets you out of it too.
Following the Morale incident, the last week of camp was not as
tough afterwards; my debacle had caused the soldiers to tone things down a bit
and even lying in the sand was now prohibited. Needless to say, I became
something of a camp hero; a personification of defiance against oppression, and de-mystifier
of Morale.
I could choose to exempt myself from rigorous drills if I wished,
not that it mattered anyway as I was now an adrenaline junkie.
As for Morale, no one knew much what became of him except
that he was re-deployed to another battle camp in the far north. Some said he
was sent there to help curb a growing Islamic threat that called itself Boko Haram. The military commanders felt
his aggression would be more useful there. I hoped so.
One evening while sitting with Vicky in the fields and
watching some girls play volleyball in the horizon of a dull Kogi sunset, she
handed me a wrapped gift. I couldn’t tell its content just by watching her
smile so I opened it.
It was a belt, a marine-green belt made of hand-woven fabric.
I turned it around and admired the texture of its fabrication.
“I noticed you lost yours in the...incident? I thought you
might need a new one”.
“Sure babe, I do. Thanks”.
She leaned onto my shoulder, and
as we idly watched the game, she filled my thoughts with the scent of her hair.
It was the sweet smell of her perfume, a rich combination of vanilla and
sandalwood…
Flash-forward six years today.
I folded the belt carefully into the duffel bag and kept it
in one of the shelves of my store room – inside a box marked PRIVATE. It was
probably an item that would remain there for a long time to come.
