So I just about survived the three weeks in one piece, and you would expect that at after living in such unconscionable conditions, better care would have been taken once corpers had left the camp, (LOL) you would be wrong!!!!
What happened instead was the decree by the NYSC that corpers should on the day of their release, go to their places of primary assignment. They insisted upon this despite the late hour of receiving posting letters, lack of feasible transportation for those who had never lived much less been to Lagos, and the lugging of camp paraphernalia to possible places of employment. In addition to the lack of all of the above, they also insisted that corp members were to report to their Local Government office ASAP, to register their attendance of above posting.
I am not a good Corper, not only did I not go to my place of primary posting immediately, I went home, had a nice long bath, ate copiously, loosened my very dirty hair washed it three times with hot, cold and hot water and slept in a nice air conditioned room. Then I prepared to go to my place of primary posting.
Going to the place of primary assignment was arduous, it was like a pile of puppies snapping at each other’s heel for a good seat on buses that last had seats, never. To cut a long story short, I was nearly robbed (if I did not run, it would have been a corpse writing this to you), I fainted, and I discovered that no amount of perfume in the world can get rid of a man with v bad body odour. To make matters worse my place of Primary assignment was in Lekki, and I live in Ikeja. These places are polar opposites, and it takes a lot of time, money, sweat and holding on to a bus seat of indeterminable history to get there. More insulting than everything put together (I know you are wondering ‘what could be worse’) it would cost all of my wages from my employer and about half of my NYSC stipend to get there, this is not counting food.
So you survive the camp, survive the journey to your place of primary assignment, finally get back home and scrub everything from your body again and use so much hot water to get rid of the animals living in your hair, get some well deserved sleep on a bed that does not reek of sweat and you think to yourself, well things will start to look up now. WRONG
After getting to my place of primary posting, (I was luckier than most, I got accepted immediately) I had to go back to the Local Government. Now I had started to look much better than I had in camp, so as you can imagine, many people were shocked at my new fabulous look which very quickly wilted while waiting on another queue at the LG.
When I arrived at the LG, and the ‘Ladies’ (and I use the word ladies lightly) found I schooled abroad, and would you believe this, those heifers told me things will go easier for me if I gave them mobile phones and/ or phone credit. What surprised me the most was my lack of surprise, instead the overt push for bribes just made me smile and B.S. them with my ‘Aunty I am a youth corper, and the service haven’t paid me, where would I find money sheh’. My response earned me an extra 2 hours just to get my paperwork processed.
Like I said I was lucky I got accepted immediately, some of my friends got rejected so they had to go through the rigmarole of reposting. Till today 12/06/2007, some of my friends have still not been posted they are involved in the usual rounds of queuing and giving bribes to influence their postings…………….
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