Waking up to a message notification from my friend, "check your NYSC portal" was no close sign to how I would feel afterwards. I had so much anxiety opening the NYSC portal, the network was not making it easy at all. It took a lot of time to finally open the portal, same time I would have used to start consoling myself if I had known my pace of Deployment.
"State of Deployment: Bayelsa" where is Bayelsa? Who do I know in Bayelsa?
My heat sank!
This time around my mood moved from anxiety to complete numbness. It was a transition from the Fear of the unknown to the fear of the unknown known. I have heard about Bayelsa State but I have heard about Bayelsa State. The only knowledge was that it was amongst the 36 states in Nigeria.
The restroom and Chrome was my rescue.
Alot of calls were made, always ending with "Why Bayelsa, who didn't work it out to a nearby state" as usual my eyes will roll, as if I was the one who made NYSC to send my call up number on Saturday and my posting letter on Monday after moving me to Batch B stream 1.
I didn't even have time to do a proper camp shopping. My God!! Iam just all over the place, from the market to cyber cafe to visiting my relatives, to the laundry, tailors place and shoe maker's. It was crazy, I was literally hanging on the hem of Abba's garment.
I finally got a reliable direction on how to travel from Maiduguri to Bayelsa. The directions got me more scared, it wasn't a straight journey, It was another rush of hot tears. I hate to travel, this time I was a calculated 72 hours or less journey; from Maiduguri to Kano, then to port Harcourt and finally to Kaiama in Bayelsa state. At this point I considered deferring till the next batch.
On Tuesday, 10th June, I embarked on this "pilgrimage journey" Alot of questions on my mind, I knew the spirit of God was speaking peace to me but my anxiety overshadowed any form of stillness.
However, while on transit I met the most beautiful persons, we were all PCMs going to various unknown camps, but we acted like we got it all figured out. We smiled, chatted, comforted each other and that was the consolation I needed " I am not alone"
