Make Time Count

admin Sep 17, 2020 1364 0

So this life is just a pot of Gbegiri and Ewedu.
When it was time for NYSC, my dad asked
where I wanted to serve and I said Lagos
or nothing.
He asked that I consider Abuja as he helped
post my sister and cousin to serve at Abuja
but I refused (as per the stubborn goat that
I was).
At school, whenever people were discussing
where they’ll be posted and expressed fears
at being posted to some obscure village,
I’d say I was definitely going to get posted
to Lagos - haq haq haq I dirrint know warris
going on.
On the day the posting came out I walked
to the notice board very confidently only
for me to see “AD” Beside my name.
I exclaimed “ye Ado-Ekiti” then one
nonsense boy beside me said “it’s
Adamawa o! Not Adoekiti!”
I couldn’t even cry.
I was so sad.

I didn’t even want to go to camp cuz I kept
getting the feeling I won’t return and
whenever I voiced out that thought, my mum
would admonish me and ask me to stop
saying nonsense.
I went to the airport to catch a flight
to yola (that was going to be my first time
of flying so thank God for NYSC) and there
I met my cousin’s friend who told me she
was posted to Maiduguri and she had a
guy who was working her redeployment
back to Lagos for N34k.
I asked her for the guy’s number and told
my dad about him so he could give me
the money to pay for the re-deployment
but my dad said he was already working
on the redeployment.
I went to camp and I made like 4 friends
but didn’t really mix.

I was mostly always in my room
When my peers were hanging out at the
mammy market in the night and catching fun.
I did all the climbing activities cuz I’m an
adrenaline junky - that was the only aspect
of camp I liked.
Anyhoo, after endurance trek, we ran to
the notice board when we heard the names
of those redeployed were up.
I almost fainted when I searched for my
name and didn’t find it.
I called my dad and told him my name
wasn’t on the list so he’d Have to give
me the 34k to pay my friend’s guy to
redeploy me which he gave me and I
paid my friend's guy to work on my
re-deployment.

From camp, I was posted to some local
government in Mubi which is about 3 hours
away from the capital of yola and is also
surprisingly really cold compared to the
harsh weather of yola.
However, my dad pulled some strings and
I was re-posted to NTA yola and so I
departed for yola the following day.
I went to NTA yola, did all the necessary
things I needed to do and departed for
Lagos the following day.
I stayed back in Lagos for a whole month
and when I returned to yola, I told them
at NTA that I spent that length of time in
Lagos because I was fixing my glasses
and they didnt query me - instead they
paid me my N4000 salary for the month
I was away.

I stayed with a friend at a corper's lodge
assigned to her for another two weeks
before my name would come out for
redeployment to Lagos.
In the 2 weeks I lived in Yola, I found that
the Hausas are a very proud people - almost
tending towards having a superiority
complex.
They loved their language a lot and would
rather speak it at all times instead of our
lingua franca - English.
They expected everyone to learn the language
and communicate with them in it.
I kid you not, during Friday meetings at NTA
Yola, they'll legit be speaking Hausa and when
they realise that I, a non-hausa was among
them, they would apologise, tell me to hurry
up and learn Hausa so I could understand them
and continue speaking Hausa during the meeting.

Whenever I went to town for instance and
wanted to board a bus, I would speak lengthily
about where I wanted to go to the bus
conductor and after my long epistle I would
get the reply of "ba hausa" or the most
annoying one "i no hear english".
I mean if you could take the pain to learn
"i no hear english", couldn't you learn a few
more words in English?
This attitude of theirs made me decide that
under no circumstance would I learn or speak
even a single hausa word -and I maintained
that resolve until I left permanently for Lagos
2 weeks later. It was the “Zo” (the only Hausa
word I knew which means “come”) I left Lagos
with that, I returned to Lagos with!

The reason for all this tales by moonlight is
that I recently discovered my boo, Chingtok
Ishaku who sings to me (ok maybe not to
me but to God but my dreams/fantasies are
valid) so beautifully in Hausa and I don't
understand a word of what he was saying.
This makes me wish that I had stayed back
in Adamawa for the One year mandatory
NYSC and learned the language.
The morale of the story is that wherever
you are, even if it isn't where you want to be,
try to make the best use of the time and
opportunity - immerse yourself in the culture
or environment, learn as much as you can,
develop yourself as much as you can, find
your happy in the place and add value to
the lives of the people you meet there so
you don't end up regretting and wishing
you had made better use of the time like
I'm currently doing.
Thanks for reading and in Falz' voice kizzez