The thick brown khaki shirt stayed sat on his body and the large designer buttons clasped the piece to order. Mummy sat just a distance away, tear-soaked yet joy-filled. Otobong had just taken the dreaded military job. YET, that is far from the scary part.
Crickets whistled through the night. The dusty wind blew with reckless abandon. Camp was scarier than usual tonight. Telephone networks had been marshed by terrorists' activities in this area. Wide roads had become bush tracks; except from a little protection by the desert heat. We lay almost a kilometre away from the last explosion...barely 72 hours away. I peered through the shadows and saw figures all looking like myself, except one; Otobong. This is my definition of fate: we both attended the same Secondary School...now, we have just been sent to the same war-front, having been admitted as 2nd Leiutenants the same day. He was more of a specially structured individual. I had felt his shape looked like an improper fraction; where the upper figure always stayed larger than the lower. His head forehead seemed to grow at a pace a little faster than his body. Muscular shoulders followed. Otobong was one man you dared not annoy. Apart from the military training we had, he was a stammerer...not exactly the kind of person you would double-cross. He was the complete soldier; made of steel and built for war.
The camp lay still as we were all fagged out from a whole day's trip in an M35 Armoured Vehicle. The tank's danglings had caused an uproar within my stomach. This was war...toilets were a taboo. In the darkness, Otobong's forehead glittered from a reflection of desert moonlight.
While my thoughts and eyes travelled, I realised that other things had travelled too. There were short and brisk movements around the camp. The trees seemed to change their positions from time to time. It is military enough to understand what this meant; I did. I stayed stuck on my make-shift sleeping rack. We were under attack!
The terrorists sneaked like a pack of lions into position. I starred, in horror, as a whole crew of about a hundred men were about to be exterminated. Yet, we all lay still.
I had to sound the alarm. No way. The whistle that hung around my neck became heavier than the MG9.0 that lay beside my rack. My heartbeat skipped numerous beats. Otobong lay frozen...still. Something was not right about this. So I readied myself to activate the "seat-eject" button tied to my right wrist. It was a trap door which opened the pit beneath my bed, sent me downward and replaced my bed with a heap of grass. From beneath, I would follow a tunnel out of the territory. Everyone was advised to have a plan like this and one knew the other's. Even Otobong did not tell me his.
Just as the terrorists emerged from beneath the moving trees, my hand swung to the whistle. Too late. The sound of the whistle was buried by the Machine Guns which roared, vomiting bullets the size of my thumb on all our beds. I activated the seat-eject and disappeared into oblivion. Soldiers do not shed tears...yet, I did. I just lost about a hundred men to these animals and, I could have warned them. My conscience weighed much heavier than the gun I hung as I crawled through the tunnel.
The 7 hour crawl was worth it, as sunlight shone through the cracks on the tunnel. Just as I found the outlet, my heart sank. I found a scarier sight; a hand waiting to pull me out and a forehead looking too heavy as its owner starred down at me. As I got pulled out, the rest of the team roared with an applause. I was the last to arrive. How they survived? They never slept in camp! Those make-shift beds were heaped with grass, forming the figures I saw. Otobong must have been a good sculptor; the reflection of his forehead came from the camp football we played shortly before bedtime.
"I wouldn't dare die on my birthday", Otobong retorted, as we jogged along to our next post.
I am i~Witness.
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