IN LOVING MEMORY - 6

 

Yipee!

After a stressful week, one cannot help but appreciate the gift of weekends, so, thank God it’s Friday (TGIF) and cheers to an awesome weekend.

Mummy always loved keeping me very close to her and this is something I fancy talking about.

Being posted to Ebonyi state for the compulsory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) was a “dream come true” for me as it meant travelling far away from home, but my dear mother did not welcome that.

In her usual style, she went on an immediate background research on life in Ebonyi (mummy was an informal researcher, lol) and came up with various inferences, the most outstanding of them being that they eat human beings in Ebonyi (Ewo! Please o,  does this still happen?) and that they do not have good water supply in Ebonyi as their water contained maggots (lol, I still wonder where she got her information from).

I was so excited about travelling to the eastern part of Nigeria that I did not pay attention to her concerns. I told her that her concerns were funny and I assured her that I would be fine (God’s got me naw, abi?). I told her this is the 21st century and nobody eats humans anymore (this is strictly my personal opinion o).

I remember one day, she called me to her room, sat me down and told me “Debo, if you want to serve in Abuja, you are just one call away o, just tell me and it will be done”. This was how serious the matter was.

To cut the long story short, I eventually left for the NYSC orientation camp at Afikpo North, Ebonyi state. While I was at the camp, mummy kept on calling to check if I was okay and if I was using dettol in my bathing water (she could not stop joking about seeing maggot in my water).

I can not forget the day she called me after seeing the pictures I sent her from camp and she began to ask if I was ill as I was looking all “dried up” (okay, I lost some weight, but “dried up”??? I don’t know about that o). She made it her duty to always end her calls with a reminder that I was the one hindering my relocation process and if I ever had a change of mind, I should not hesitate to tell her.

It took only one horrible evening parade to change my mind about staying in Ebonyi (maybe my mind is not so strong after all.. lol). That evening, we were drilled beyond measure. To me, the reasons for that level of drill were totally unjustified (a corps member did not greet the camp commandant properly and other very hilarious reasons).

I still don’t know if it was the pain of the drill or the fact that I was punished for an offense which I did not commit that annoyed me that night, but I remember how all of a sudden, I began to miss home and wanted to so badly be with my mum as I thought of the many ways my presence in Abuja would relieve her of unwanted stress. When I could not help it any further, I decided to make that” long-awaited” call to my mother (I was ready to go back home).

As soon as she picked up the call, I began to cry as I told her in igala language, “mummy, na tene kwemi” (pardon my igala o), meaning “mummy, I want to leave here”.

As expected, mummy was overjoyed, she even asked if I wanted to leave the camp immediately or I could endure till camp was over. I chose to stay since we were already approaching the end of the second week but I had lost interest in serving in Ebonyi.

Mummy got my details, reached out to her “connect” and I was relocated back to Abuja.

We had no idea that it had worked out until I checked my dashboard on the last day of camp after I had received my Ebonyi posting letter and saw that I had been posted to the very Local government area that my mother was afraid of.

(Do you remember that thing they say about being active in camp, so you can be posted to the capital? it did not work for me! Even after participating, coming first and winning the cash prize in the inter-platoon debate organized by Google Digital Skills for Africa, I was still posted to a local government).

With the last ounce of hope in me, I rushed to check my dashboard and when I saw that I had been relocated to Abuja, I heaved a sigh of relief (Home, sweet home).

Dear mummy!

This is my heart-writing, the scribbles straight from my heart in loving memory of my sweet mum.