To Serve With Love, Part II

As promised in my last post, here comes the second installment of the nightmare that was NYSC camp. My biggest beef with it, far above the poor sanitation, the brutish officials, the ‘cozy’ living quarters, was really just the stupidity of the whole thing. It’s three weeks where you take grown-butt adults, make them share rooms like prepubescents, tel them when to go to sleep, when to wake up, make them perform stupid dancing drills at 4am, make them march for the governor and to what end? No one seemed entirely sure .

The whole thing was run by a bunch of illiterates, who resented foreign-trained students instead of seeing them for the valuable resources that they are. The thing with these “foreign-trained” students (that phrase was always spat out with the most bitter venom imaginable) is that they’ve seen how things are done outside of a country that is not run by money-obsessed orangutans. They’ve seen that with just a little bit of effort, conditions can be exponentially improved. They understand the meaning of customer service. They get that people who have voluntarily (somewhat) enlisted to serve their country must not be treated like vermin, but like heroes. Instead of capitalizing on the skill-set and worldview that these students bring to the table, they are treated as persona non grata. You these fake Nigerians, please get back to your country – awon omo obodo oyinbo --if you love it so much. (Trust me, I’m working on it).

The main culprit in this regard was the Camp Director. A slow-thinking, slow-speaking chore of a woman who cannot ever have seen the insides of a grammar school at any point in life. On one particularly interesting night, following a bonfire party that promised to be hot but fizzled out early, the boys decided to revolt and storm the female hostels which were bolted shut to protect the female corps members’ virtue. They were unable to breach security but caused enough of a fracas to get everyone a bit worked up. Camp Director Lady is mad and someone is going to bear the brunt of it but who would it be? Who could she blame for the male corpers acting in such an unruly fashion? The female corps members, naturally. She goes from dorm to dorm admonishing the girls for “waving around their dirty, smelly c*nts” even though “almost 70% of the camp has tested HIV positive”, advising girls to not accept any requests for “blowjoys” as it is an indication that a man cannot perform and should have his “hammer” chopped off, and advising that condoms are not safe because “when he is at the height of his excitement, HE WILL REMOVE IT!!!” This is who is running the joint and who convinces herself every night before she goes to bed that she is empowering and educating the future of the country.

On another night, a couple was caught inflagrante delicto in the bushes behind a bus. Two adults. Two consenting adults. Two nasty adults, but two consenting adults nevertheless. They were flogged in front of the whole camp, allegedly until the guy broke a tooth. Greater than being a waste of time and a health hazard, the biggest affront of this entire process was that it was being run by people with absolutely no sense of propriety or decency.

Anyway, the whole thing ended with you being posted to a primary assignment where you’d serve (aka work like a slave for very little pay) for a year. Some were pleased – they got posted to the cushy lawfirms and accounting outfits. Some were hesitant – they got posted to the banks, where corporate prostitution in the name of attracting more customer deposits is not unusual. Some were distraught – they had clearly been posted to teach in a secondary school (using the term ‘school’ loosely) or work in a local government. Regardless, we all left the camp that day (on my bloody birthday, no less), with nothing but our hopes, our dreams and our vows to never again reurn to the dreaded Iyana-Ipaja.