Imagine travelling and arriving at your destination at 1 a.m. on the second day. It was the longest journey I have ever had in my life. I never expected to find myself in such a faraway place away from home. The journey lasted over 13 hours and at the end of the day, I felt so weak.
These are my travelling bags
I got my call-up letter to camp and serve in Kebbi state, the North part of Nigeria on Sunday night. I felt so sad when I saw that I had been posted there, besides, it was a shock to me to realise what lies ahead of me. I started preparing by buying the remaining items that were left to buy as I had to pause them when Grandma died.
I told my siblings about it, though they were sad and felt pity for me even when there was nothing to do. My sisters tried for me as they kept keeping in touch with how I would travel and to make sure it was a safe one. Something that got me sad was how risky the North is and hearing of how people are being stopped on the road, killing and kidnapping.
Well, what do I do? I made up my mind for the journey. I travelled down to another state where my aunt lives because I was told there was a garage for the Northern buses. This was on Tuesday morning, I slept over and woke up so early, that I got to the park at 6 a.m. I was the first passenger and in a few minutes, I saw more passengers who were going to the same state as mine. They were also prospective corpers who were posted to where I am. Being around these people was fun.
I couldn't take a picture as I had a low battery and was trying to reserve it because my family had begged me not to switch it off so they could always reach out to me and never get worried. Well, fortunately, I charged my phone with the car charger, the driver was a young professor who had a second side hustle he was managing.
At first, the network was kind of good as I was excited that I would be online as my phone was charging but I met with the worst experience ever. Imagine being out of service for over 10 hours including when I got to the orientation camp. I couldn't call or chat online, I started sleeping like soaked meat. Lol. The journey was so stressful because of how bad the road was. There was a time when we passed through a dusty road for 3 hours and the road was damaged. Any car that passes through the route safely should thank God. Our car had a little fault but we weren't delayed because of that.
My family got worried at some point when they heard we were still on the road around 9 p.m. At first, the driver promised to drop us off at the orientation camp but changed his mind when he got to a spot and told us he was still going to Sokoto. He said, had it been we were up to 5 corpers, he could have taken us directly to camp but we were just three. We got to the last junction that would take us directly to camp at 11 p.m. The town looked like a real city that was still bustling at that time. We were able to get a cab that conveyed us to camp and by 1 a.m., we got there safely.
On getting to camp, we were checked by officers at the gate before entering to proceed to the next stage. We got to the next stage where we were given room numbers and beds each for us. We were ordered to the female hostel, room number one which was upstairs. We got there and met other corpers already asleep and we had to take our things in gently so we do not wake them up. I only slept for 2 hours because I had to attend "Behind the Bags" by Breads on Space. The sound of the trumpet woke me up. I will write about this funny scene in my next post.
Thanks for your time on my blog.
