GOMBE CORPER SERIES PART 2 : MY LIFE IN CAMP (part B)

Throughout my 21 days in camp, I had great days and not-so-great days but generally, I would say I mostly was on my own. I joined the OBS but never went to the studio, competed in inter platoon elections, and was given Asst. platoon leader, with my opponent (a male), automatically being crowned leader because my platoon coordinator felt it was right that a man should govern, and a woman should be under. But guess what? Yep! You guessed right.

I ran the platoon all by myself, delegating some duties and having to carry out other duties myself. I did the work of the platoon head, but never got the glory and recommendations that I deserved, developed high blood pressure, and had to take some blood pressure drugs still, I never gave up. During my high blood pressure days, my mother almost collapsed out of worry but God is faithful. My birthday came and it was not a bad experience though, most of the time I was preoccupied with platoon coordinating work so I did not have that leisure of visiting the Mammy market except it was really important.

The boring Lectures and SAED training were the only periods that I had time for myself, to sit. (emphasis on the sit because most of the time I was either running around to get my platoon members together, or supervising the tasks I assigned them to, and so on so during lectures or SAED, I had a little more time to sit one place and maybe take a short nap before I was being called to check something out) in just a week in camp, I lost a ton of weight and got darker.

I barely had time for myself and the MTN network was nonexistent as such, I had limited time communicating with people in the outside world so I pumped that frustration into platoon job from 3am to 11pm for 19 days. Everything happened in such a hurry that so many things happened in so little time. During the social nights and inter platoon competitions, people would be busy having fun, but I would be running around organizing and making sure my platoon put up a great show to win something. Truthfully, I also had fun watching how everything I coordinated turned out great. For most people, all they saw was a short girl on glasses, always running around and putting things in order with her platoon officials but no one saw how tired, stressed, lonely, depressed, odd, and sad I felt most of the time, no one could understand though even if I had tried explaining and trust me, till now, I cannot explain for you to understand.

When it was time to redeploy, I told my mother I had wanted to stay and she wanted to die. 'the north is not safe!" she would scream every day. When that did not work, she resorted to trying everything she could to make me pick the redeployment form, and truthfully, I did but to date, honestly, I don't know who took it from under my pillow. I just came back in the evening of that same day, and it was gone. So, it was not entirely my fault that I stayed back.

The first time I left the camp gate before our 21 days were over, I together with two corpers went to the main market to get foodstuffs for the inter platoon cooking competition. It was a scary yet thrilling experience that I was entering Gombe main town for the first time. The sellers rose their prices because we were dressed in our NYSC khaki and jungle boots and that showed that we had a lot of "Government money" we tried our best to communicate with the sellers and buy at least most things that we had budgeted for. At the end of the day, I was so stressed but I still had to supervise work that I had delegated while I was away as the next day was carnival and I needed to make sure everything had been put In place. (I think I slept around 1 am and woke around 3 am to start preparations for Carnival)

Somewhere around the middle of the carnival, I switched off my phone and snuck into the hostel to have some me-time before I ran mad. So far, everything had gone smoothly; canopy, decorations, food, drinks, dancers, enough chairs for everyone, the list was endless. Phew! I desperately needed to breathe at least before someone realized that I was missing and even as such, as I laid curled up on my bed, wiping stressed tears from my eyes, I prayed if anything went amiss, they could figure it out without me at least for the first time.

After carnival day, the stress was reduced for me because we were leaving camp on Monday but every time I thought about it, my heart would begin racing.

Where would I stay?

I did not have any connection that was supposed to work my placement (Place of Primary Assignment) for me, except God. Okay, chill…I had a guy in the camp that had promised me he was going to help me with the placement. Monday came and just like any other perfect state, Gombe's sky opened up to baptize us with heavy rain pro max+. I got my placement letter and saw GMC. (Gombe Media Corporation) I was sad because the guy that was supposed to help me get to the general hospital where the pay was high, turned out to disappoint me. However, I was content that I was in the heart of town. That was all that mattered.

I was so eager and excited to move to my PPA and so pulling my box and fully drenched under the pouring rain, I left Gombe State Temporary Orientation Camp and never looked back.