One Year, Many Stories: The Candid Chronicles of a Nigerian Corp Member

I am Bello Damilola Temitope born on May 30th. I am a graduate of Microbiology from the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Ogun State, Nigeria. Growing up, I had always had the dream to finish my academics with a stellar performance and serve my country at the end of it all with the confident aspiration that I will never outrun the will of God and that I will be fine at the end. Therefore, it wasn't a surprise to me when the call-up letter from the Nigerian Youth Service Corp(NYSC) appeared in my mail. 

However, on opening the letter, I got the shock of my life when I saw Nassarawa state was the state that had been allocated to me for my service year. I screamed hard, literally because Nassarawa is a state up North and a very long distance from Ogun state where I reside. My parents were worried about their daughter moving away that far and I had begun to consider deploying back to the South where I come from after a couple of weeks. Miraculously, I received a call from someone who told me he could assist with my deployment at a very minimal charge. My parents were happy and they gladly paid for it after which I was deployed back to the south in Oyo state. Although I didn't get my state of residence as the service center, Oyo state was just a three-hour journey which I could travel easily. 

Gradually, the day to travel arrived and I took off to the camp at Ìséyìn, Oyo state, Nigeria. Days at camp to me came as both interesting and arduous. For me, the most interesting part of going to camp was joining the Nigerian Christian Corpers' Fellowship, NCCF. It was always an hour every day but these moments were always awesome times! The prayers, the songs, the dramas, and most of all, the wonderful relationships built there. Another interesting aspect of the NYSC camp was the competition between platoons. My platoon was one of the few ones that had been tagged as being bound to fail, however, we won beautifully, not once but three times! The joy of winning is something that I cannot even put in writing till this moment!

Life is never a bed of roses, likewise,the NYSC camp was filled with some miserable adventures for me. One of which was the day a lady misplaced her money and didn't discover it until late at night and then, she reported to the soldiers at the campground who went ahead to wake everyone up. I mean, this was 12 am(GMT+1), midnight, and we were all asked to start searching around to find the misplaced money.

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Another one of these miserable experiences I had was the way we were trained hard. We were practically trained like we would be entering the Army the next day and my poor self had to go on a stretch(lol). At this point, what kept me going was the mindset I had that quitters never win all their lives and because I knew that the challenges I was facing at that time only made me stronger. I am glad I went through that seemingly tough training regimen because now, I am a refined gold that has gone through fire! I dazzle and no one can take that glitter away.

At the end of the time spent at camp, I was left musing to myself about the security state in Nigeria and I realized that if the soldiers could be as well equipped as they are at the campground during terrorism attacks, Nigeria would have been one of the safest places to be in the world.

Lastly, I got to know after this period that although I've got no fears about what the future holds for me, I would never like to go back to the NYSC camp.

Thank you, The Prosperity Ark for this opportunity to document my experiences.