6. The weeks that followed

6. The weeks that followed
So, here we were, two weeks of grace, your first two weeks is given as a grace period during which you should be taught all you need to know. The two weeks of grace were filled a lot activities like learning how to wash and starch khaki, starting with our khaki ojebs, how to polish and shine boots, how to use a boot rag, how to serve different punishments, which weren’t called punishment but job (please note anywhere you see ‘job’ from now in this blog it actually means a form of punishment), we learnt different jobs like planting, langa, monkey crawl, air force wine, agama lizard, forward roll, hunching, hanging, press ups, hanging on your knuckles, etc, we learnt how to cover up in threes, we learnt we are not allowed to walk, as a clown you double (jog) from point A to point B, we got to know our classes, got to understand the rules of eating in the dining hall like gentlemen, learnt how to sit up and sit easy, learnt some slangs like azwire (as you were), we learnt so many things within these 2 weeks of grace, one thing was conspicuously absent from the two weeks of grace though – GRACE, it was supposed to be a two weeks of grace but grace was nowhere to be found during the period, we bought job after job, and served job after job.

We had adapted to our new surroundings quickly, we knew how to plant and azwire within seconds, how to sit up when a senior enters the dining hall, how to pay compliments when a senior passes, when on a parade how to say the right word of command to pay compliments, it involves standing at attention and then standing at ease, the usual way was ‘squad squad shun, squad stand at ease, squad shun’, but you would mostly here different versions, sounding more like ‘sko sko chan, sko stindad ice, sko chan’. Well, each day crept by and our theoretical two weeks of grace filtered away, JS2 boys now had total freedom to destroy anything hanging only ‘one bar’, we hadn’t been issued uniforms and boots so we had to wear our house wear always, they had to be neat, ironed and sometimes even starched for parade. By now I knew the ‘sit on your head’, ‘forward roll’ and ‘press up’ that Deji had taught me was in no way easy, life was tough.

One quiet evening, we heard there was trouble, a JS1 boy just resumed and was not aware of what AFMS was about, he wasn’t used to anybody talking to him rudely, he was approached and talked to rudely by a JS2 boy who was shorter than he was, and what did he do? He slapped the JS2 boy… OMG, heaven was going to fall, who is the JS1 boy, his name is Tosin Adeta, we heard we were in trouble, they had placed all JS1 boys on contact putty, we had ‘bought it’ big time.

After tattoo that night, we were told we had murdered our sleep, so no sleep for us, then the job began, planting, press ups, hanging, hunching, I thought the world was coming to an end, cover up in threes, open ordered march, adopt press up position, start counting from the first man and give 10 press-ups, after that count from the second man, we were over a hundred in my set, that means before we went round ten press ups per person we would have given more than 1000 press ups in total, and after the counting has reached the last person, you start from the first person again, then hunches, hanging, flogging, we were not crying, we were weeping, the funny part is, they asked who the offender was, and Tosin Adeta stood up, he was told to go and wait inside a room, to get a worse punishment, but by the time they finished with us they totally forgot him in the room, meaning he did not serve job with us, welcome to the sometimes unexplainable world of military life, I think it was about 3am, when sergeant Okoli came to the hostel, he said they had been hearing us crying and weeping in the barracks, and his wife refused to let him sleep all night, insisting he must come and plead on our behalf that they should release us to go and sleep, he begged them to forgive us so that his wife would let him get some sleep before morning, the job continued for a few minutes after he left, we were then finally released, thanks to the motherly thoughts of sergeant Okoli’s wife, it was a welcome relieve, straight to our beds, weakened, tired, exhausted. That was my first experience of ‘blanket putty’, blanket putty is a situation where one person commits an offence but all of you are made to suffer for it.

Blanket putty kind taught us to stand up for each other, usually called ‘esprit de corps’, this spirit is still with us today and I can say I trust most of my EXJAM friends when it comes to standing with you in times of trouble. We grew up with the mentality that one person’s offence is everybody’s offence, so, no need casting, and the usual casters (people who snitch and point out the person who committed an offence) were usually abused and isolated as betrayers.

Life continued, we survived and learnt more survival skills as each day passed by, personalities were being developed, the dodgers, the witty, the intelligent, the sharp ones, the riders, the daru strikers, the patchers (eye-service masters), we had every kind of personality… we were truly becoming Junior Air Men, but we hadn’t done our drill squared test, we hadn’t done our attestation, we were still in the process, so we couldn’t put on that camouflage uniform just yet, not just yet.