On Stranger Tides

The Adventure Continues
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Am I alone? It can’t be – how can I be the only one sent to a village so remote?” I kept asking myself
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A tall and dark man, whom I later got to know as the Local Government Inspector – an NYSC official – spoke to us about the procedure for resuming work in the various villages we had been posted to. We were to get there, locate the schools we had been assigned to, collect an acceptance letter from our employers and return to the Local Government Headquaters for documentation.
“… for some of you, your employers are already waiting outside to pick you up. Although NYSC requires that employers pick up corps members assigned to them, only a few of them comply.” He concluded.
By now, the hall was filled with clusters of people – each Community Development Service (CDS) group met briefly. From where I sat, I looked outside the hall and saw some cars and buses parked. Later on, I realized these were meant to pick up corps members to their respective Places of Primary Assignment (PPA) but there I was still alone and partially confused. It reminds me of a cartoon I watched when I was much younger – “Courage The Cowardly Dog”. This dog lived in the middle of nowhere, was a true coward but was named Courage. He had to defend his owners Eustace and Muriel, an aged couple, from monsters and suchlike. Well, here, I was ‘alone’ and I had to defend myself from panic.
One by one, each CDS group moved towards the car park, boarded the cars provided by their PPAs and vanished from my sight. As more corps members left my anxiety rose concomitantly – perhaps I was in the middle of nowhere. 
“Anybody heading to Kanturu? !!” I shouted as I waved my hands in the rapidly reducing crowd.
“Anyone posted to Kanturu CDS?” I continued.
I picked up my luggage from where I had dropped it and went outside the hall. I walked in and around the small crowd left still looking for that ‘someone’ who was also going to Kanturu CDS. It was obvious that my employer hadn’t sent a car to pick me up so my plans shifted to how I could get to Kanturu   village before dusk – it was already 5:30 pm.
“Were you posted to Kanturu?” A male corps member asked me.
From the look on his face, I perceived that he was also posted to Kanturu – I could tell he was just as troubled as I was. I got to know his name was Hillary.

[I’ve come to realize that it is unwise to ever think one is alone in any thing in life. It reminds me of Elijah – he thought he was the only one still serving God; unbeknownst to him, there were seven thousand other youths who still served God as well. If you do good, it’s not wise to think you are the only good person on earth and if you’re in a difficult situation, it’s equally unwise to think that you’re the first, or only person, facing such a situation. There is always a degree of situational companionship in life.]
“Yea!” I replied.
“So is it only two of us that are posted there?”
“Hmm! I think so – na serious matter O!”
“Chai! This people wan kill us.” He said.
Having found a companion, my thoughts became clearer.
Hillary went to the Corps Liaison Officer (CLO), a senior corps member who is responsible for the welfare of corps members, their brief discussion went this way:
“CLO sir! We have been posted to Kanturu. How do we get there?”
“Ehmm – ok – wait. I think – Ok. I’ll call the coordinator of your CDS group to know if he’s still coming to pick you guys.”
“But it’s getting late and from the way thing are looking the place is far.”
A dark lanky guy who stood by overheard this and intervened:
“Is it only two of you?” He asked.
“Yes!”
“CLO, they can join the car going to our CDS, spend the night with us and proceed to Kanturu tomorrow.”
“Ok. But let me call their CDS coordinator first – perhaps he’s on the way already.”
“We are about leaving.” The guy said and with that, he left us to ourselves.
We waited and dusk came to welcome us as well. By now, it was clear that we couldn’t get to Kanturu anymore – so, we had to sleep in the CLO’s quarters. Other corps members whose PPAs didn’t pick them up and whose villages were far away stayed behind too – if I remember right, there were about 20 of us.
We walked a short distance to the CLO’s residence. It was a detached bungalow having a parlour and three rooms. In the garage, chickens were being reared (I learnt, later, that it was a means of raising cash for a CDS group) and the vicinity was redolent of their odour.  All around the compound were Cashew trees laden with fruits and the associated Drosophila Melanogaster – which haters of biology call ‘fruit fly’. I checked my phone and it was 7 pm. There was no electric power and my phones were running low on power. I quickly called my mother:
“Hi Mum. Good evening.”
“When did you arrive? We have been trying to reach you since. Is there …?”
“Mummy don’t worry. I’ll call you tomorrow when my phones are well charged. I’m safe and all is well.”
“Ok till then. I’ll tell your dad. God bless you.”
“Amen. Good night.”
I sent Patrick a text and hoped the battery wouldn’t go off midway. As soon I got the delivery report my heart lifted.
“Check the inner room and pick out mattresses – you can rearrange these chairs and lay the foams here. Just make yourself as comfortable as possible.” The CLO told us.
We quickly scrambled for the mattresses, shifted the chairs in the parlour, changed up and lined up the mattresses in parallel – length to length. There were just five mattresses in all – so, we slept straight while some others snuggled in chairs – it was uncomfortable. There was just one lady amongst us so she had a room, and a mattress, to herself. There was hardly any space for turning, if one felt the need to change a sleeping position in the night; one had to rotate about his own axis. As if to compensate us, the temperature dropped sharply at night. It helped in a way, the cold helped me bear with my sticky body as well as the sticky bodies of the two guys who slept by my left and right.
[It’s funny but I relish this experience. There was an element of fun in it; we ‘shared all things in common’, there was a kindred spirit amongst us, and we tolerated each other gracefully. Now that’s how life should be. Don’t you think so?]
By 3 am one funny guy, perhaps tired of sleeping, started playing a song loudly from his phone and a drama ensued:
“Onyinye ye ye ye ye! Onyinye ye ye ye ye! … No One like you!” Came from his phone.
“Ooh! Guy – guy find ear piece use.” One guy said sleepily.
“Park well O!” The “DJ” replied.
“Guy off am now, see us we plenti we dey sleep.” Another sleeper commented.
Silence.
I lay on my back and wondered. How on earth could a guy play music from the speaker of his phone by 3 am – “Wonders shall never end” – I thought. I drifted into sleep. Thank God I did because the next day had even more surprises in store.

A QUOTE (Ayi Kwei Armah, The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968) (Oxford Heinemann, 1969, 45)
“Ah, you know, the chichidodo is a bird. The chichidodo hates excrement with all its soul. But the chichidodo only feeds on maggots, and you know the maggots grow best inside the lavatory. This is the chichidodo.
Food for thought: Substitute man for the chichidodo, death for excrement, and sin for maggots. [Get the picture?]

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FRIDAY 12TH JULY ‘13