NYSC Orientation Camp Day 5 ; Patchworks and Pre-Drills

I enter a room and see a doctor I worked with during housejob sitting pretty with her friend. I get a very odd feeling from this person in particular. I open my mouth to speak and my words are not clear. It comes out garbled so I switch to tongues even though I don’t know why. The girl eventually attempts to attack me. I brace up for the impact but it never comes. After that, everything gets dark and I sink into peaceful oblivion. I realize I must have been dreaming because when I open my eyes, I’m back on this NYSC bunk and someone is saying it’s 4 am. That means we’re supposed to be bathing. My body feels rested but my mind is exhausted from the dream – or nightmare, which at this point I don’t even remember.

I’m supposed to get up, undress and bathe, I’m also supposed to dress up and go to the parade ground. Instead my eyes close and I sink into a much restful sleep. It feels like this one lasted for 8 hours because I’m much more refreshed when I wake up. It’s 4:18 am in reality. I sit up and contemplate my life. It’s almost time for parade and I’m not ready to lift a finger. Is it compulsory to even bathe? Dream or no dream, this is the most refreshing sleep I’ve had, albeit short. I start to dress up and tell myself I’d bathe by 7 am after the early morning parade. Some part of my head judges me and I retaliate by saying my last bath was 5 hours ago so what the hell. I get baby wipes and clean my face and rinse my mouth with Listerine. I’m good to go, good to go, good to go!!!

Lost and found

When I get downstairs, we are held up, apparently someone’s phone was stolen and they decide to search all the females. This is where it gets interesting ?. We are asked to line up, about 5 lines, which as you know eventually morphed into bodies pressed together like sardines. So when you are searched, they’d tell you to go back to join the queue again instead of marching out to the parade ground, such wisdom.

I realize I’m in no mood to speak English or Yoruba so I switch to my pidgin side.
I say to no one in particular, “If you late me with your serenre so, I no go follow corper-wee crawl o”. This is because it’s a custom for the soldiers here to make Corp members crawl out as punishment for being late. Everybody around me laughs and some tension disperses. I realize in the world of Bsc holders I might actually be considered funny.

Flashback.

Still on this crawling matter, I particularly remember 2 days ago when I was late and the soldiers set a stick in my way as barricade and asked me to crawl under it as my punishment. I must have laughed in Spanish that day – inside myself of course. I straightened my back, chest out and stood firm telling the soldier that I was headed to the clinic to see patients, which was true. The barricade was removed and I was allowed to go free. I was proud to be a doctor in that moment, feeling on top of the world. Like a Demi-god. Which I actually am. I kid, I kid.

Back to reality.

At the camp ground, I continue to clown away and I actually have fun, especially during the exercise. I learn some leg work which is a somewhat herculean task for me. I should probably join a dance class once this camp is over. I’ll add that to my imaginary to-do list.

The instructor announces that we should be security conscious, and also emphasizes that we should particularly stay out of dark areas. It’s not because he cares for our welfare. It’s simply because he is obligated to make comments about the recent phone theft. His words are a dreary lull to my ears until I hear him say they caught a young lad jogging into the Mamy-market at around 2 am. My ears prick up because for some reason, I know when gist is about to get sweet. He proceeds to say they accosted the boy who claimed he was only jogging to keep fit. That may sound mundane to you but what follows shortly is how you know my radar is alert.

The instructor adds that by 2:30 am, they saw a female corper also heading to the Mamy-market. Her own story is that her platoon instructor asked her to meet him there for rehearsals.
Only her.
Only her in the whole platoon.
She must be really good at whatever they are rehearsing, for him not to need any one else. In my head, my first comment is still pidgin. I say “oshey, korrect mekwe king“.

PS; If you are not Nigerian and you don’t speak pidgin, I recommend that you visit Twitter and search for what “mekwe” means. ?Thank me later.

After this, we proceed to do other activities. There’s the option of marching, dancing or volleyball. I don’t want to stain my white much so I shy away from volley ball even though I’m good at it. Also, I don’t have the consistence it takes to March since I still have duties as a doctor in the clinic so I choose to dance instead. We get there and I see all sorts. I take some videos because that’s the only way you’ll believe what I saw. This particular guy knows how to whine his waist more than me, so I ask him to teach me and in no time I get good at it. I mean good. You guys are in trouble. I can now whine waist small ?

Clinic duties.

I proceed to the clinic, and they bring this girl in. She is really vomiting. The military nurse looks at her from afar and shouts “vomit everything before you come here, nobody will clean anything for you”. It’s mean I know but we all end up laughing anyway, because this is Nigeria. We draw humor from our constant suffer-head.

Steamy Ears.

This guy comes in and demands for a male doctor to come attend to him: he makes his order with his nose upturned to the sky and my stomach recoils in response. My face stays straight outwardly but my head pieces things together and comes up with a likely diagnosis. There’s a narrow list when it comes to diseases that make an “apparently healthy” man ask for a male doctor and given the things I come up with in my head, I’m quite happy that he makes his request. This is because even though it’s just 7:30 am in the morning, I’d rather conserve my energy and avoid looking at anything unsightly. So, I direct him to this Edo guy seated beside me and in no time I can see the steam coming out of my colleagues ears, whatever the patient is saying or showing is definitely not going down well with him. I say a prayer of thanks to the gods for allowing me escape that.

Emem comes in and sits beside me, she tells me she is just realizing she doesn’t have my phone number. I’m too lazy to call it out or type it out for her on her phone which she hands to me. So I just go to Whatsapp and scroll to our doctors group chat and save the number straight up from there. This proves to be more work when I consider it in retrospect. Emem is this “oyibo-paw-paw” doctor who is happy-go-lucky. She likes touching me even though she knows I’m not a huge fan of physical touch. Sometimes I like it, other times I’m simply germophobic but her company is pleasant so we are all good. She is also very observant. It takes her approximately 6 minutes of interacting with me to figure out that I hate germs just by watching my very subtle response to her suggesting that I share my drinking water with a patient who I don’t know from Adam.

I go to the camp wards afterwards to pick up my kit from the CMD. He is the one Opemipo gave them to for safeguarding. Somehow he admits to me that he snooped through Nengi’s phone while she was reading an excerpt of something I wrote and that in as much as he didn’t finish reading it, he considered it brilliant. This same something I wrote is what you are currently reading. I’m sure you share his brilliant sentiment. ? He then proceeds to say that he is a web developer and that I can blog my words so the whole world can benefit. I jokingly say no one reads blogs these days, but deep down I know I’m considering it strongly. It’s been on my mind for some time now. The fact that you are reading this is proof that I was wrong. People actually read blogs.

After retrieving my kit, I attempt to try it on which is a fatal disaster. Nothing fits, as in nothing… Except you count the Crested white T-Shirt. We have Man-O-War Drills today and I need to be appropriately kitted. So, it seems I’ll have to visit the tailors ASAP to proffer a genius solution.

Boring lectures. ?

We are herded to a lecture and I kid you not, the depth of boredom dissipated there is a phenomenon I quite lack a simile for. I sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep again. When I wake up for fourth time, my head is aching and I just can’t deal. My fellow corp members are booing someone off stage and she is promising that it’s her last point. I stand up to my feet, glad to discover that they still work, and I head over to the infamous mamy-market-turned-mekwe-zone.

On-Duty Privileges.

A female dressed in navy uniform, who I suspect to be a nurse, gets all bossy with me, ordering me to “fall back” in to the lecture. Like falling back is an easy thing to do. I decide her tone is too rude for me to bother responding to so I just flash her my ID card which boldly states “Doctor on duty”. Whatever protests she had in her died that minute as I watched her swallow her pride and let me go. I walked the rest of the steps to my destination swaggering with the heady feeling my privileges just afforded me. I order a smoothie and request for grapes, dates, tigernuts, banana, pineapple and strawberry to be blended together.

The guy blending decides to try my ancestors by forgetting to wash his hands before picking up one of the fruit. I’m prompt to remind him that I would not be paying if his hygiene standard falls short of what I’m comfortable with. He takes one look at me and behaves himself from that moment on. After getting my smoothie, I visit a tailor who agrees to add something short of one yard to my grossly undersized khaki pants. I’d be paying 1000 naira for this. I bother not with pricing as the fear of God is strongly at work in me. I just hope what she is able to do stands the rigor that is sure to come with all the activities that comprise the Drills.