Letters from Yola I

Plan Versus Reality

Dear Fellow,

I planned to write a book about my NYSC year. But I do not think that plan will work.

Please calm down. Let me walk you through the situation, then you can let me know your thoughts in the comments section. I trust that works.

Thanks.

I am glad that you have another despatch from me—this particular piece you are reading right now. Thank God for this great opportunity for us to interact again.

I hope February ended well and you are hopeful for this new month, March 2025. May it be an awesome, exciting, and positively stretching month for you and more.

So, during my final year as an undergraduate student, I had just arrived on campus this particular day. I had my journal with me that day. I was in school earlier than the time for the class I came to school for. Before that day, I had been brooding on the idea of writing a book about my NYSC year. But the idea first found expression in concrete form—that is, to be written down—on that day I was in school earlier than my lecture schedule for that day required of me.

That journal entry on that special day contains the working title of the book, the conceptual structure of the book, and some skeletal details about the content and the book’s form. The idea evolved. It was still viable by the time I was done with my coursework and undergraduate research work and graduated. The idea remained intact. Turned out I had to wait for an extra year after my undergraduate studies before I was summoned for the one-year national youth service.

The project became more ambitious as it evolved. I wrote a letter to inform a few people about the idea, to get their feedback and suggestions for how to make the book better. I wrote to a few friends, contemporaries and a couple of my older friends. Helpful insights came from both camps, with generous and graciously detailed inputs for a better book. My contemporaries even went a step further—a dozen of them accepted my invitation to join a WhatsApp group called LetterMan NYSC Book. There is a folder on my Drive account dedicated to this book project as well, which contains details of each part of the book. You cannot expect less from someone who considered his writing friends nonchalant because they didn't come out with a book about their NYSC year by the end of the service year. But I only knew as much.

The point where I am now can be likened to my interaction with this book, since when I first saw it and handled it:

One of my few weird advocacies before my service year—till now—was for promoting writing manuals and guides among first-year undergraduate students. I figured at a point during my undergraduate research work that I ought to have done all my writing assignments at the university according to the guidelines and tips contained in two to three chapters in the Use of English textbook my class was issued in the first year at school.

We all read that book to pass the course, but the book's purpose was more than just getting extra CGPA points for being tested from the book’s content for an hour during exams. Those two to three chapters ought to be rendered in the form of Cortland Smith’s and Steve Devitt’s A Little Book on Writing a Paper at AUN: Words of Encouragement, Warning, and Help (to be called AUN’s Little Book henceforth, as used also by the authors in the book).¹

My excitement as soon as I held AUN’s Little Book was weird to my colleague Enemag (a pseudonym), who gave me the copy shown above to keep for myself. I read through the text immediately the following weekend. AUN’s Little Book stood—and still stands—as a solid support for the validity of that weird advocacy I have for the benefit of first-year undergraduates in Nigerian universities.

There are several moments like the one at the discovery of the little book. I have experienced so much in the past three months I have spent in Adamawa State—the good and the bad, all together. The experiences are so immersive and engaging. Writing a book in this headspace is not impossible, but I choose not to trade these moments for the pursuit of writing a book. I first need to understand the lessons and digest them in this season before they are distilled into a book for a wider audience. This is why I don’t think I will have a book about my NYSC year at the end of my service year.

However, writing is essentially thinking for me—and also a way of programming my mind. I owe the friends mentioned earlier compensation for their time and contributions to the vision of a book about my service year. Therefore, with their interest in mind, I decided to birth this vision in two ways.

First, the supposed content of the book will be the primary theme of this newsletter for the rest of my service year. Second, the service year experiences will find expression in writing projects other than a book solely about my NYSC year.

By all means, worthy and commendable, the vision is not lost. This is how you can be part of it: through questions, shares, and feedback, engage this series I want to pursue on this newsletter for the rest of my service year.

Letters from Yola is what the series is and will be called. The name does what it implies—letters to you, my good Fellow, wherever you are, from Yola, Adamawa State, where I am currently serving my compulsory one-year service under the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). I hope you find the journey worthwhile.

Till I write to you again, may you never lose your wonder!

Your LetterMan,

Tongjal, W. N.

1. Smith, Cortland, and Steve Devitt. A Little Book on Writing a Paper at AUN: Words of Encouragement, Warning, and Help. American University of Nigeria Press, 2014.