Musings About My NYSC Camp Experience ( Episode 3)

Hey guys, I apologize once again for taking too long to get on with this series. Check out episode one and two, if you missed them.

In episode 2, I mentioned that I met a boy in camp, as the days went by, I grew fond of him. You know that thing that happens when boy meets girl and the rest becomes history? Nah it didn’t happen. Turned out to be what happens in camp stays in camp kinda situation. He certainly wasn’t the one. Sorry to burst your bubbles, I know some of you all were waiting for some serious juicy stuff 😂

Did I ever mention how I ate Bole (roasted plantain) and fish almost every single day in camp. I was in love with this delicacy. You all know my obsession with plantain 🙈. I never visited the kitchen until the day my platoon was delegated to cook and there was a reason for this. I made up my mind never to eat the food coming from the kitchen the day I tasted my bunk mates food, it was supposed to be the famous jollof rice. For one it did not look like it and certainly did not taste like it. Anyway, I lost my food pass on the first day of camp, so even if I were tempted to try it out another time, there was no way. So how then did I survive?

I bought this Yaji pepper (dry hot spice) from a girl in my hostel. This pepper was the ketchup to my chips, the groundnut to my garri, in other words, I used it for almost everything I ate. I had a favorite restaurant I ate breakfast or lunch at (didn’t discover until after a week in camp). Their food was the best in camp. Another life saver was the cereal I brought from home, this helped me during the times I didn’t have enough time to visit the restaurant before the lengthy hours of lectures.

I was never the one to visit mami market without a definite purpose in mind. The times I went there was to buy food, take my clothes for dry cleaning or get them back. Mami market is a certain type of market that comes alive at night. It was certainly one of the things that intrigued me the most about my camp experience. There was loud music, the smell of various food, cigarettes and alcohol. Lots of dancing and ‘faajii ‘(enjoyment) like the Yoruba people of Nigeria would say. This was where everything people called fun happened, personally, I would call it a place where people lose their home training. I saw many things my mind is yet to process. Overall, I would rate by camp experience 70 percent enjoyable and 30 percent stressful.

How would you rate your camp experience ? Do you look forward to Nysc camp if you haven’t served ?

Feel free to ask any questions, will gladly answer them.

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