So this is what I have to look forward to...

NYSC Camp


Everyone I've talked to about it gets a look on their face: equal parts terror, nostalgia, and gratefulness that they'll never have to go through that again. Kind of like the chicken pox.


I asked what at the time seemed a fairly innocent question: Tell me about your time at NYSC Camp.


What came out were enough horror stories to make me really reconsider the whole thing. So far I knew the basics of Camp:


1. You were locked away for three weeks in a poor excuse for a school with military men in charge of 'making something out of you'


2. You had to bathe outdoors because there were no bathrooms and you wouldn't use them if there were


3. You had rollcall at 5am daily and had to do numerous aerobic excercises including running a mile before the sun comes up


4. Disobedience was punished by simplistic but very demeaning physical feats including, but not limited to, frog-jump, pick-pin, kneeling, and more.


5. There was no electricity, no running water, no one to fetch water from the well for you, etc.


Of course there were more, but I thought I could handle this. But the worst was hearing the personalized experiences


"...we had to wake up at 2am and shower because the boys would come and shine their torches at us..."


"...they put us in one room with 50 bunk beds and no windows..."


"...I had to poo into a plastic bag because I didn't want to go outside at 3 in the morning..."


"...the mosquitoes were so large and vicious you could actually feel them land on you but you were too tired to care..."


"...there was only one gate out and in, and it was patrolled by the army men. If they caught you sneaking, they made you remove your clothes and march back to the dorm..."


"...the only way to get out was to paaaaaay, and I'm still paying..."


Umm...what???


All of a sudden I'm really really thinking about this. Me that hasn't even paid my own phone bill, or cooked my own dinner, or done my own laundry in over six months...I have to do what?


Of course there are things I can do. I can ask to be posted to Lagos or Abuja which reputedly have much more camper friendly camps. But then I'll have to serve in Lagos or Abuja and that's not the point is it?


I want to serve in Port Harcourt. I've got a good training agreement with a great company here and if I'm looking for home this is the closest I'm going to get.


And also, there's a dare-devil side to me that, though usually dormant, still exists. It's the same side that pushed me to go free jumping some years back (though they had to threaten me with calling the fire department to get me to pull the cord). It's what pushes me to ride the biggest and baddest roller coasters once, even though I detest those metal monsters, just to say I've done it. It's the part that had me applying to Stanford,CA even though I knew no one there and I was terrified of being so far away from family. 


In this case, it's the part of me saying, Lolo, you have your whole life to be a spoiled aje-butter who gets whatever she wants from mummy and daddy. For three weeks, just suck it up.


And I will.


That said, my other tabs in Firefox read: battery powered water heater, tablets to make you constipated, portable mini airconditioner, mosquito net...