Access to internet facilities were absent for the entire twenty-one days except for only those that had internet enabled phones. The state coordinator came out strongly to defend the reason why laptops were not allowed. The usual fire night and endurance trek were also cancelled.
At the end, majority of the corps members were convinced that her decision was in our best interest. Our stay on camp was totally regimented and the officials made every effort to make sure that we all attend the lectures that were lined up as part of our camping activities.
The soldiers were very friendly but never failed to discharge their duties especially when it comes to mobilising corps members for the camping programmes. They had a hectic time trying to enforce the 10:30pm light out on camp on a daily basis especially because some corps members would not want to voluntarily leave the night market for their rooms.
Read also: Diary of a corper: Inside the NYSC camp
My write-up will not be complete without sharing this with you. As much as the corps members tend to pretend that the Federal Government allowance often referred to as ‘Allawee’ by the corps members is insufficient, I noticed that fellow corps members took all the necessary precautions to safeguard their allowances from being stolen.
Literarily speaking, after collecting the allawee, corps members could be seen consciously and conspicuously carrying their waist purses around and sleeping with the purses tied to their waists.
The most outstanding of them all were the skills developed by the foreign students who obviously were reacting to their negative information about Nigerians and money.
Let me share my personal experience: while on the queue to collect my money, I asked if a particular foreign student could help me change one of the N200 notes given to me by the bank officials because it was torn. To my utmost surprise, the fellow said no because to him, the idea sounds stupid and silly. I had to swallow my anger as I realised that he might not be able to figure out the weight of those words here in Nigeria and he must have reacted that way based on the information he has been fed with before coming to camp.
