LOOKING BACK! 6YEARS AGO(OCTOBER 2015-OCTOBER 2016) A SHORT STORY OF HOW I LOST A FRIEND AND RAN AWAY FROM MY PRIMARY PLACE OF ASSIGNMENT DURING YOUTH SERVICE- 10% PAYOUT TO STEEMALIVE

INTRODUCTION

Hello everyone!

Am so sure everyone is doing great wherever you may be right now...I welcome you all to my blog. I want to use this opportunity to say thank you to mr @focusnow for hosting this contest. Indeed it has given me an opportunity to bring to remembrance my national youth service year and all the experience i had during those times.
Today i would be sharing with you all about my national youth (NYSC). I hope you seat back and enjoy as you read to the end..

MY NATIONAL YOUTH SERVICE POSTING

National youth service popular known as NYSC is something every Nigerian graduate looked up to been a part of after graduating from the higer institution. I have always loved to serve my father land as it is always said, in fact back when i was still in secondary school i admired corpers or corp members when i see them. There was this lady corper i loved so much, she lived close to my house back when i was in SS 3. Each time she is on her uniform passing my house, my mum will come and call to come see my friend, even though i never said a word to that corper, i just loved to see her on uniform. I guess that was when i made up my mind to also make sure i experience what it means to be a corper.

SS 3 chemistry practical

After my final exams in Imo state university, Owerri Imo state, the next thing that followed was project defence and clearance. My first Joy that year happened when my name came out as one of the best graduating students in my department. My course mates and waited patiently for NYSC posting and then my Joy was completed when my name came out for youth service. I was so excited because in the school where i graduated from, students stay a long time before their names came out, i guess either because the number of students were more than the space allocated or because the students had some academic issues. Out of the all the people in my department only 16 names was released to go for youth service and my name was a part of it.

@ruthjoe and some coursemates whose names were out for NYSC

MY DISAPPOINTMENT

As my name came out for youth service, i began the nysc registration process, i chose the states i wanted to be posted to and with so much excitement i anticipated for me to be posted there. We were required to chose 3 states and i chose Portharcourt, Owerri and Delta state.

Finally when the NYSC posting letter came, guess where i was posted to? Plateau state.. I broke down in tears, i could not understand what happened. I cried and cried as though i had lost something or someone. Serving in the northern part of Nigeria was like a death sentence to me. Why? Because of the insecurity issues in the north. I didnt know how to break the news to my family and friends. It took me about 2days to be able to tell my family members about my posting. I felt so disappointed, i did i end up in plateau state when i did not fill plateau state? Its was a mystery. My friends came around to share the joy of where they were posted to and i told them mine, they just said dont worry you will be fine.

HIGHLIGHTS OF MY NYSC IN PLATEAU STATE(JOS)

I summoned courage to go to plateau state for my NYSC. The orientation camp for plateau state was located at a place called mangu as at the time of my youth service mangu orientation camp was one of the best camps in the country. It had great facilities like beautiful rooms, air conditioned large hall for meetings, volley ball pitch, and large field for morning assembly.

MY FIRST NIGHT

Mangu camp was very cold infact, one of the coldest places in plateau state. I have never experienced such cold in my life. The first night was horrible because i could not sleep, i was shivering and was really cold. I wore virtually almost all the cloth i came with, but the cold refused to stop. I began to cry and disturb people in my room. I cried out saying i want to go homeThe ladies in my room had pity on me, they called for the attension of the camp directors and they took me to another room which was a bit warm. I managed to sleep. You can see how the weather looks like from this picture below.

For 1 week i was not bathing and no body knew. It was so bad because sun was not shining in the camp, even our clothes barely get dried when washed. I felt really fustrated in camp. I cried almost everyday in that camp to point that everyone in my room knew me and loved me because of my crying habit.

Finally they began to sell hot water for us in camp, so i had a woman who always supply me with hot water morning and evening for next 2weeks i stayed after i had spent 1week without bathing properly.

CAMP ACTIVITIES

We had different activities in camp. I didnt like so much stress so i joined the team for match pass, i also got involved with sports. But everyone was made to under go some training activities in camp, although i tried not to get involved but at last i was caught and was made to go through the trainings too.
Camp activities held in camp included different kinds of sports like football, volley ball, we had competitions like cooking, dance, drama, beauty pageantry. Here are some pictures.

MY PRIMARY PLACE OF ASSIGNMENT,HOW I LOST A FRIEND AND HOW I RAN WAY

My application to be redeployed to another state was not granted. I was sad and was not myself the whole day. After staying in mangu camp for 3weeks, we passed out from camp and our place of primary assignment was out. I was posted to Bassa local government

Bassa local government is another cold region. In bassa local government i was posted to the secretariat. I got there and discovered it was very cold, mountains everywhere with constant rainfall and no sunshine. The very first time we saw the sun shining, it looked like heaven to us, it was a big deal, everyone brought out their clothes to wash.

The constant rainfall made our corpers lodge colder. You need to see the we dressed. I kept covering myself properly, dressing like someone that is about to fly to the moon. It was really funny. The people of bassa didnt see anything extra about their weather , in fact sometimes we saw their little children running around without clothes on their body.

The cold became more as we approached the month of november december, one of my friends began complaining of ribs and joint pains, it was taken for granted, the pain intensified and she was finally taken to the hospital. Doctor said she had cold and my friend finally died of cold. It was really a sad day. I kept thinking of how her parents will feel hearing the news of the death of their child. I resolved not to allow my parents go through that experience, so i decided to run away. The next day i packed all my belongings and went straight to the car park without telling anyone. I paid for a bus going to Abuja. I called my course mate there to inform her i was coming and she was so excited. After making the call, i switched off my phone so that nobody will be able to reach me. I got to abuja safely. I stayed in Abuja for 1 month before i travelled back to Lagos for our church national camp meeting. After the meeting i moved back to owerri and didnt want to return back to plateau.

CONCLUSION

Nysc for me was not an easy one. I had many bad experiences that i do not want to remember. But am glad that today i had the courage to share one of those sad experience. Am also glad i was able to finish up with my nysc, even though i ran away, i had to come back and change location just to enable me passout. I made new friends and built alot of relationships which i still connect to even till date.

Thank you for reading

@focusnow
@samuel20
@ninapenda
@bright-obias