9. General JS1 life continued

It wasn’t all gloom; every Monday was military training for JS1 boys, so we didn’t have any academic classes, we were taught how to handle rifles, principles of firearms, military communications, dismantling and re-assembling a rifle etc, Learning how to use a gun was probably the most interesting part, actually holding a real gun, I remember very clearly the very first day we were taught how to catch a rifle by the barrel when it is thrown towards you, we learnt about the safety, jamming etc, we learnt that you load a rifle with full 25rounds in normal conditions in war, but in muddy conditions you load with only 15rounds to avoid jamming, we learnt how to strip the rifle incase of a jam and remove the jammed bullet and re-assemble the rifle, we learnt how to clean your rifle, we had not yet started shooting, but hey, we were getting there.

We had made new friends, we had dodging spots where we spent our days and sometimes nights to escape the rigours of the hostel, we had learnt that you didn’t always have to ‘fall in’ when you heard the command. You could risk the consequences of being caught and dodge instead of falling in.

One of my personal ways of getting extra sleep in the morning, because I was so small, when I heard the call to fall in and I still feel sleepy, I fold myself as much as I can into a very small arc on my bed, and then squeeze my blanket over myself, so the bed looks empty and the blanket just looks like someone rushed out of bed and pushed the blanket to one corner, whereas I am under it sleeping peacefully, I hear the footsteps of the provosts passing round the rooms and passing my bed thinking it was empty, when I became a senior I made sure no junior did this to me by personally flogging every blanket I saw packed to one side on a bed and I succeeded in catching some juniors that way, hey, you cant use my tricks on me, invent yours… lol

We had many ways of dodging, it was in AFMS I learnt that anywhere your head can pass through, the rest of your body should be able to pass, we learnt how to ‘paratroup’, this actually means sneaking out of your hostel through a window or jumping from the balcony, we had these tiny holes in our windows and we could squeeze ourselves through it in seconds, we also learnt how to jump from the first floor balcony of our hostels, we learnt quickly that when jumping from such a height you land on your toes, and spring forward and dash for your life because if you are caught you have murdered peace for yourself for that day, sometimes if time permitted you could get a bed sheet, tie it to the balcony, and slide down, the bed sheet helps you half way down so by the time you are jumping the height isn’t as high as jumping directly, we learnt how to climb to the roof top of our hostels and sleep there, how to sleep in the bush all night (using the ‘see without being seen’ skills learnt during military training), how to curl up and sit in a small locker for hours, inshort, we learnt how to make peace for ourselves in an environment that was devoid of peace. I remember an unfortunate day I paratrouped out of a tiny window and landed on a JS2 boys head, he was dodging behind our hostel, he started hunching me, he was dodging, I was dodging, but I was serving job as I dodged, each time I wanted to cry he would slap my head ‘you idiot keep quiet, if they catch me here you are dead’. During classes we laughed, joked, played, studied, etc, just like any JS1 boy in any other secondary school.

Of particular note were our French teacher, Miss Ogbozien Isagua, Music teacher, sergeant Joshua, Fine arts teacher, sergeant Izekor, type writing (or was it english) teacher sergeant Adams and maths teacher, sergeant Ilesanmi, I can never forget sergeant Adam’s ‘agogomadiagba’, which was made out of red, grey and black electric cables woven together to make a flexible cane that would always leave permanent marks on your body when used on you. I remember Mademoiselle Ogbozien’s usual French lessons, when she comes into the class we all greet ‘bonjour mademoiselle’, to which she replied, ‘bonjour, comment ca va?’, ‘ca va bien, tres bien merci’, we would then sit and go through our French lessons, she would sometimes say something and ask us to repeat after her, ‘repeter après moi, je vais a l’ecole’, to which would repeat ‘je vais a l’ecole’ she would carefully listen to our accents and make sure we get it perfectly right, and she would say ‘encore’ and we would chant again, ‘je vais a l’ecole’, we certainly had the best education and I couldn’t have asked for more at the time, we constantly came out tops in all state and federal quizzes and exams. The AFMS culture was already being embedded in us ‘STRIVE TO EXCEL, in AFMS, second best was unacceptable, as you would observe as this blog goes on.