Jola Ayeye updates us, Jola who was supposed to be serving the nation, boycotted but she’s managed to help her friends manage their diaries. The NYSC Diary Series is edited and compiled by Ediale Kingsley. TMT’s Camp Diaries — Day 2
For a moment there I thought we had lost him. I thought we had lost it all. Not a peep. Not a tweet. Not a call. Where is TMT? I could barely think. I was scared and sweating, wondering where my comrade was…
Nah not really. Our generator was moving mad last night and I was looking forward to a mosquito infested night, combined with oppressive heat and copious amounts of sweat. Who had time to think of TMT? Thankfully, after 2 hours of sweating, praying and lamenting on twitter (because what else could I do), the generator came back on! I was too busy whispering sweet words of appreciation to my air conditioner to think about TMT at that point but priorities please! I had been staring down the methylated powder barrel at heat rash, but look at God (praise dance)!
Anyway, a few minutes ago TMT came back to life and sent me his Camp Diary for day 2 so obviously he is still surviving. All’s well that ends well kids
Day 2: Camp.
2:30am: “There’s nothing noble about poverty. “
That was the first thing I thought today as I tried to finesse a shower.
The bathrooms in camp aren’t really bathrooms. They’re barely rooms. I mean besides the Wasp nests, cockroaches on the wall and old spiderwebs, it’s just a containment situation with a hole in the middle of the floor. I keep having to tell myself that there’s nothing these guys can handle that I can’t. The fact that I have to constantly repeat that in my head is probably proof that I’m wrong.
Lamba wakes me up at 2:25am saying I need go take a shower. I replied “no” and tried to go back to sleep but Lamba starts saying that if I’m not clean, then my Lagos girls won’t want me anymore and they’ll look to him. For some reason I genuinely cannot explain, it’s enough to get me out of bed.
I fetch a pail of water literally from the top of the hill and get directed to the “bathroom” I described earlier. I walk in and walk out in less than 2 seconds. If I never see that room for the rest of my life, it’ll be way too soon.
Anyway I shower by a tree. At this point I’ve convinced myself that this is probably what my great-great grand parents did.
On my way back to my dorm(?) I run into a bunch of guys returning from the bathroom I had completely dismissed as a thing, casually discussing if Yemi Alade prefers Yoruba or igbo men.
Daniel (who is now my roommate with Lamba, Victor and some boyish looking man named Lanre) are in a conversation with dude from Abuja called Lemar who’s been talking about how disgusting the bathroom situation is. “We need to do something about it. We cannot live like this! We are men.”
Daniel doesn’t look from the clothes he’s folding and replies “men don’t complain about bathrooms. If you want to fix something, help some the children in this community get to school. Do something that makes one day in their lives easier.”
Lamba nods in approval as he walks out of the room for a cigarette break at 3am.
I nod in approval in my head.
Lemar leaves frustrated.
I ask the guys if they honestly see nothing wrong with the bathroom situation. They all disinterestedly discuss how it’s a bathroom and you spend less than 10 minutes out of a day in it.
Victor talks about how at home he had to use his neighbours shower before school because he didn’t have one where he lived.
He tells me he plans to build a big house in Ogbomosho and he’ll get any kind of bathroom his girlfriend wants but as far as he’s conferenced it’s really just any room he can take a shower in.
Lamba walks back into the room with a dead scorpion he killed while he was outside smoking a cigarette.
“There’s something noble about poverty” I think to myself as I drift back into sleep.
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