THE GENESIS OF MR OTONDO

   Pam Pam Pam
Pam Pam Pam
Para Para Pa ra ra

This was the sound I heard from my sleep. It sounded like a trumpet. Perhaps this was the sound of the rapture. Had Jesus come? Was I left behind? While I reasoned if I was dreaming or awake, confirmation came.
“If you’re still sleeping you’re wrong!” Some soldiers making rounds echoed.

They banged our flat’s metallic door with sticks and I am sure that even dead men would resurrect at such noise. I tapped without thinking at my phone’s keypad and its screen came alive. With it I found my slippers, slid my feet in and stole a glance at the screen – I saw 5 am. Quickly, as new comers would, we jumped out of bed and the flat. Joining the throng of other corps members Jogging, we approached the “bridge head” – a concrete culvert that led up to the parade ground. Just then Patrick stopped and we stopped too – Segun and I. He figured that if we drifted smartly into the registration hall we would blend in with those who were yet to register and escape whatever it was that was to happen so early. We turned left and found our way into the hall. Our stratagem worked! We quickly inched towards the hall’s podium and slept on the carpet. It felt good to have some more sleep – howbeit, with dirty bodies and smelly mouths.

Peeping from time to time at the parade ground from the hall window, we knew when the morning drills were over and ventured out of the hall. This thrill of adventure and escapement reminds me of boarding school. I remember all the tricks a friend and I used to evade the “ever-ready-to-flog” senior students. It was exciting but dangerous. Being free to play or read while my mates were beleaguered was exciting but if any senior student caught us in the act, we slept with itchy buttocks and wet eyes. Segun suggested for us to go collect our kits - the official NYSC clothing. We were still wearing mufti instead of the official white and white. We got to the canopy and quickly collected them. The kits were distributed according to platoons. A platoon is a group of corps members having the same last digit in their registration numbers.
I bent down and left the canopy where I collected the kit.

“Size nine! Size nine! Who needs size nine?” A petit lady shouted close by me as she held up large boots.
“Hi – what’s your boot size?” She asked me.
“I don’t know let me check.”
I checked and saw size ten.
“Mine is size ten.”

She gave me a confused look and walked to another person. Realizing that my black and yellow jungle boots were too big, I started searching for someone to exchange with. This was trade by batter in action. To find someone with matching wants was onerous and after 15 minutes of searching and shouting- “I need size eight, who needs size ten?” – I gave up and soon caught up with Segun and Parick. Bukky had found new friends.

Again Patrick had a smart idea, he suggested for us not to change into the official camp gear – white and white – yet. We complied! Doing this helped us escape the 9:30 am drills and we felt smart. But for how long could we evade the camp activities? Not so long – in fact we escaped the frying pan and entered the fire instead – as you’d see!
Still new and unschooled in camp ways, I shunned the camp kitchen food and bought breakfast in the mammy market. The mammy market is a make-shift market on camp where traders sell their wares and provide services for a price. The stalls in the camp mammy market were made of wood and raffia palms although a few were canopies. Each stall resembled the other and only an occasional cardboard pasted in front of the stall provided such stall an identity. As I walked along the main undulating and untarred road in the camp I gazed at the market stretching ahead on both sides. After an initial indecision on where to eat, I branched into a canopied stall- I think it bore the inscription “Mama Ngozi” (not real name). I was taken aback by the astronomical price of goods.

“Madam how you de sell your food?” I asked.
“A plate na 250” She responded while still serving other customers.
“Wetin you dey give for the plate sef?”
“Na rice or swallow you want?”
Swallow? For this kind early morning
“Rice”
“I go give you rice, meat and beans or moi moi for inside that plate”
“Oya give me rice”

A younger woman served me the rice and the size of the helping did little to encourage me. Here I was far away from the comforts of home being exploited. I gulped the food hurriedly and in silence.

I joined Patrick and Segun in the hostel – by this time it was past 8 am. There was still no water so our bathfast continued.

Time flew as well and by 4 pm of the same day we were again awoken from siesta to head for the parade ground. We ran out of our flat still in mufti hoping to evade the parade drills – this was where nemesis caught up with us. Our flat, the very privileged house that was to serve as our domicile for the next three weeks, was amidst a dual line-up of bungalows. It had a parlour, a store, a toilet and bathroom and two rooms. All spaces in this building, except the toilet and bathroom, were converted to living areas laden with bunks. As I think back I can only smile and thank God for our good fortune. Other corpers in the hostels were faced with worse off conditions – noise, poor toilet facilities and suchlike. Many of them had to disgorge their bowels directly into mother earth and irrigate the arid land with bath water and other liquids of humanity. Such was the life lived and missed too.

“Hey you two – stop there!” A tall dark soldier shouted.
We stopped in our tracks and turned.
“Why are you not on white and white?”

Silence.

“I said why are you wearing mufti?” He iterated.

Looking at each other, we saw through our hearts. We didn’t want to lie. We’d rather face the music.
“Sir we collected them just this morning so…”
“Before I count five go in, change up and run out – rascals – one, two…” He cut in.

We darted in, jumped into our clothes and reappeared before him. He scanned our faces slowly but deeply:

“We are sorry sir!” We said.
“I wicked pass satan o! Go ask people we sabi me. Una dey do big boys abi? I don mark una face. For this camp na me and una. Criminals!”
“We are sorry sir!”
“Sorry for yourselves. Will you get out of my sight and appear at the parade ground!”

We vamoosed.
That was the beginning of troubles. Looking back, though we were punished, and rightly so, I am grateful we did not lie. The holy book says that the devil is the father of liars; so, I am happy that even in the face of trouble we did not identify with his fatherhood.
The evening drill, graced with the unrelenting sun, was an eye opener. It was stressful and hard. My skin felt sore and my throat felt dry. I remember that a lady fainted and had to be helped out by the Red Cross staff. We had to prepare for the official induction ceremony holding the next day and the state governor’s presence was anticipated. Without the induction we were still only “prospective corps members”. I can never forget what happened the next day.

“MR OTONDO”
In white and white I tiptoe on hot coal
white boots turn brown then black with shirt and soul
commands and squats then drills and barks jolt me
But who said man was made without a fee
quantum leaps of sparks from red hot flame
Never deter the soup-fly from it's aim
So why should I shudder from nation's call
And whine and sneak by trick on earthen ball
For if the dross is left untouched by smith
Wherewithal shall ware be taken meet
I cannot march to beat beaten by filthy hands
Neither should new drink be in old skin
I am Otondo - for the repeated time
If nation's tender blades shall break green at dawn
Then white must be the hands that mould the ridge