After years in the university, what comes next is the compulsory one-year service to the country, NYSC (National Youth Service Corps). Fresh graduates are mobilized and deployed to various regions of the country. They will stay in their primary place of assignment for a year, after which they will be given a certificate of completion – The NYSC Certificate.
The new NYSC batch just got released and she has been posted to a rural area in the northern part of Nigeria.
It’s going to be really stressful, she has never been to such an area where you have to feed on whatever nature gives her, this area is not even the least civilized area, it’s below civilization. It is a little village with a church, a borehole, a few mud houses, a little market where she finds nothing she is used to, and a school, where she has been posted to. It is a community secondary school where children from about five villages gather together to learn. It is no doubt more hectic for the children coming from a really far distance. Here, she really has to serve her country and as well impact good academic and to the lives of the children that she will get to teach.
The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is a program set up by the Nigerian government to engage Nigerian graduates in the nation's development and growth. It gives you the opportunity to meet new people, carry out projects, be useful to the country and also travel to places you probably would have never thought of ever been to, and that’s the situation she has found herself. After a few months of being in this area with my fellow corps member, they have gotten to adapt well to the environment and every other thing including; the people living in the area as well as the students whom they teach.
Teaching is a really fun job to participate in especially having to share knowledge with a bunch of kids who are ever ready to learn or not. She got to understand the difference between a kid in such rural conditions and a kid who had grown up in the best-civilized society you can find. When she got to engage in a conversation with several people and also her fellow teachers, she learned to understand that accommodation is what actually brings out the best in people and also helps in understanding the kind of personality they are. As stated earlier, the people of this community feed from whatever nature had provided for them, so basically they were mainly farmers, fishermen, and hunters, trying to sustain themselves and the lives of one another.
Teaching can be really hectic and she really missed the goodies of the home which virtually everyone in this area has no access to.
During her stay there, she got to understand another perspective of life and that Is, “not everything in life comes served on a platter of gold”. Up until now she never really understood what it really meant to have no access to the best snack in the city or have a taste of that spicy food you love or even have no access to light and clean water for a long period of time.
Finally, a year is over and her days in a rural area are brought to an end when she receives her certificate and leaves for her home back in the city. She will sure miss the moments spent there with the fun loving people and the care they had rendered onto her fellow corps members and her.
She returns back home, done with school, served her country for a whole year, and now officially an adult and jobless. The job search begins and she had gone for over five job interviews and hasn’t been called in for a job yet, she is still hoping though.
Now the current situations reveal to her that being a Nigerian goes beyond just being born by Nigerian parents, it incorporates being able to adjust to the nature of your country and the level of unemployment of the majority of Nigerian youths like her. To top it all, her parents get to remind her often that she is of marriageable age. It suddenly gives her the feeling that they are in a haste for a husband to just come around. Anyways, she has decided to be an entrepreneur instead of waiting till when her certificate will become useful.
She always had the belief that a Nigerian girl achieves whatever she sets her mind on achieving, provided she’s serious with achieving it, be it in terms of choosing a career or choosing a life partner.
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