Tears and joy of service

The time is again ripe for us to call some people ex-national service personnel. They are the new group of people who must start learn­ing how to sing songs like “Hark My Soul,” a sorrowful anthem of all jobless people.

The song is a choral appeal to God to intercede on their behalf so that “morning waakye” will not become a palaver.

Just as some are out-going national servicemen, others are preparing to become in-going servicemen. And I’m glad to hear that these days people are accepting postings to the rural areas because conditions in the countryside are no longer too bad. Ask Mr David Kanyi, the Greater Accra Regional Co­ordinator of NSS and he’d brief vou.

At least you won’t be infected by the guinea worm. If anything, it is the roundworm which would present a problem like it did to Ali, otherwise known as Emmanuel Lawer, a class­mate of my younger brother Alor.

In fact, the worms, contrary to med­ical logic, made Ali a very prosperous person during the course of his national service. His belly was growing bigger and bigger and people began calling him “Alhaji”, thinking he was becom­ing wealthy.

As I once said, Ali went to the hos­pital and pleaded with the doctor to measure the extent of his prosperity, whereupon he was given two small pills. The next morning the entire colony of worms was decimated and Ali tearfully lost his Alhaji status in the Upper West Region where he undertook his national service.

Sometimes, going far away from home to serve the nation is like going to “hustle” in Lagos. For those forced to serve in the Upper Regions it is like slugging it out in Sokoto, and there, you can only make it if God dey your back.

You might be posted to a remote village where there is a tiny primary school and a JSS block that looks like it had just suffered from an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Ritcher scale. You’ll think the building will collapse on you, but it won’t. You are supposed to go in there and serve the nation.

Immediately you land, you must get a place which is an accommodation whether you think it is or not. You’ve got to accept it, otherwise you will be transformed into a Son of Man with nowhere to lay your head (Matthew 8:20).

A landlord will receive you as a serviceman with open arms until you start eyeing his beautiful daughter. Some landlords don’t tolerate such non-sense. They expect you to behave like a castrated goat and be the good tenant you are supposed to be.

Anyhow, your landlord would ask you a few questions.

“Krakye, you’re from the South-eh! How’s the place like?”

“Fine. They all send their greetings”.

“Good! For how long will you be staying?”

“About a year.”

“Good. This is your room,” he’d point to a small door. “The only advice I’ll give you is that if you follow some­body’s wife, they’d stick an arrow into buttocks, Get the point? An arrow is not a small thing”

“I know Baba.”

“I’m glad you know this. So if your manhood worrying you, go and drink pito and cool it down. if you chase my daughter, worse things will happen to you. I wish you a happy stay.”

Events narrated by past servicemen are good pieces of advice to their successors. You’ll find your national service very interesting or not de­pending on how you conduct yourself. And you have to go by the adage that while in Rome, do as the Romans do. If you go to Cinkase don’t go behaving as if you’re from Larteh. Abandon your Larteh ways altogether.

First and foremost, you must get used to the idea that your new envi­ronment is quite different from what you used do know and that you must as much as possible adjust to the staple of the area and acclimatize to the weather.

You must also know before-hand that the first disaster you’re likely to en­counter is known as diarrhea. For three days, your stomach will be cleared of southern rice and meat stew, to be filled with Zaafi and alefi soup. The first day, you may need Andrews Liver Salt, but subsequently, you’ll be swal­lowing the ‘tuo’ morsels like a hungry native.

Yeah you got to forget about oats and butter-bread for breakfast and eat their food, drink their pito but don’t stare at their wives while licking your lips. The fact is that matters of the heart cannot be joked with. A man might forgive you even if you slap him in public but if you go near his wife, then you’re really in for like the foolish dog who sees fire and still wants ven­ture in. Some sins cannot be forgiven.

The most important thing to do also as a service personnel is not only to go and eat tuo zaafi and come back, but to impart knowledge to the local folks. Tell them about the need for family planning, and sex education, but please don’t demonstrate the practical use of the condom.

You must try to make an impact by teaching them about environmental cleanliness, personal hygiene and func­tional literacy.

All these you have to do not by be­coming “too known” but by being witty and accepting their points of view and counteracting them wisely and getting the message across. But if you go and tell them alcohol is not good, they’d say you’re a bad person who doesn’t want them to enjoy life.

You may also preach the good news but if you speak in tongues, they may be tempted to think you’ve been possessed by the spirit of one of their gods. In the process, they’d say their religion is superior to yours and you can’t convince them again.

In fact, if you make good use of your time anywhere you’re posted be it a cottage in the East or a hamlet in the North, you’ll come back satisfied and fulfilled. That is the real essence of national service. The service period is not time for honeymoon. It’s time for hard work and helping society.

Coming back home after national service is another palaver. Some come back fat and jolly but for others, their own parents can’t recognise them twenty metres afar unless they use a binoculars. When Edward Alomele, my kid brother came back from Karni, Upper West, I sincerely mistook him for a Malian refugee begging for alms.

I realised that the guy was smiling to me but these refugees hardly smile. I became confused. I was about to give him 50 cedis when I realised that it was my own brother. I embraced him. He was back from war or better still he had literally deserted the army and was back home leaner than a hungry Somali.

But he was happy and fulfilled. He had served his nation admirably.

Yes, some come back wealthy others return as churchmice. Some come back alone, others with a woman and child behind them.

“Mama, this was the lady who helped me-o! If it had not been for her, I would have died of kwashior-kor. She fed me well on beans. Look how fresh I’m looking.”

“But who’s the child?”

“That’s my first born.”

Mama will then realise that his dear son didn’t eat beans alone. He ate something else too. At night!

This article was first published on Saturday, September 24, 1994