Ade arrived at the district barracks in a cloud of red dust.
The truck that carried him and dozens of other young men shuddered to a stop in front of a low, yellowed wall topped with broken glass. The gate was a sheet of rusted metal, bent slightly out of shape. Two soldiers stood on either side, rifles slung, eyes hidden behind cheap sunglasses.
"Down," one of them barked.
They jumped from the truck bed, boots and sandals hitting the hard ground. A few carried small bags. Most had only the clothes they wore.
Inside the yard, the heat rose off the packed earth. A line of acacia trees threw narrow strips of shade where older soldiers lounged, watching the new arrivals with expressions somewhere between boredom and annoyance.
A man in a faded officer's cap stepped forward, a whistle hanging from his neck.
"Welcome to the proud Defence Forces of Nambara," he said, voice flat. "My name is Sergeant Yakubu. From today, you are no longer villagers, students, mechanics, or whatever else you were wasting your time on. You are recruits."
He paced in front of them, boots raising small puffs of dust.
"You will learn to march. You will learn to shoot. You will learn to obey. If you cannot do these things, the enemy will teach your families what happens when a man is useless."
Someone in the line shifted. Ade kept his eyes straight ahead, jaw tight.
Behind the barracks, he could see the faint outline of the northern hills, hazy in the mid‑morning light. Somewhere beyond them lay all the places the radio called "areas of instability" and his uncle called "where boys go and don't come back."
Sergeant Yakubu blew his whistle.
"Names," he said. "When I call, you answer. We must be sure you are the same bodies they sent us on paper. No ghosts."
He started reading from a clipboard. Each name dragged a short response: "Here." "Present." "Yes, Sergeant."
When he reached "Sulaiman Adebola," Ade answered with a dry throat.
"From Kouta," the sergeant noted. "Farmer's son. Good. You know how to work."
He moved on.
After the roll call, they were marched—awkwardly, out of rhythm—toward a row of long, low buildings with corrugated metal roofs.
"These are your dormitories," Sergeant Yakubu said. "Thirty per room. You sleep where I tell you, not where you want. You eat what we have, not what you dream of."
He pointed at one block. "You, you, you," he said, tapping shoulders as he walked. Kofi felt the tap on his own. "Third room."
Inside, the air was thick with the smell of sweat, old mattresses, and disinfectant. Two rows of metal bunk beds squeezed along the walls, thin foam mattresses on top, some already claimed with bags and blankets.
A boy with a city haircut and clean sneakers threw his bag onto the top bunk nearest the door.
"I take this one," he said. "Coolest air."
Another recruit, taller, with the callused hands of a laborer, frowned. "We can share the window," he said. "Don't start a fight on the first day."
Ade placed his small bag on a lower bunk near the middle. From here, he could see both the door and the window. Habit, learned from years of listening for storms and stray animals at night.
"Hey," someone said beside him. "You're from Kouta?"
Kofi turned. The speaker was thin, with sharp cheekbones and a scar on his chin.
"Yes," Ade said. "And you?"
"Cazanda," the boy replied. "My name is Emmanuel."
The word hung between them for a second. Cazanda. Highway. Protest. Gunfire.
"I heard there was trouble there," Ade said carefully.
Emmanuel's mouth tightened. "Trouble is what people call it when soldiers shoot at your neighbors," he said. "My mother told me to keep my head down when I came here. So that is what I will do."
He threw his rolled‑up mat onto the bunk above Ade's.
Sergeant Yakubu's voice cut in from the doorway.
"You have ten minutes to choose a bed," he said. "After that, the bed chooses you by remaining empty. Then you march."
He walked down the line, eyes scanning the room.
"Listen well," he added. "Out there, people gossip about the army. They say we are killers. They say we beat old men at checkpoints, steal from trucks, burn villages. Maybe some of that is true. Maybe not. I don't care about your opinions. I care that when I say move, you move. When I say stop, you stop. That way, at least, we die in some kind of order."
He left. The murmur of conversation rose, low and cautious.
Ade sat on his bunk and opened his bag. Two shirts, one pair of trousers, a worn out photo of his parents standing in front of a maize field. His mother had slipped it in without telling him.
He held the photo for a moment. In the picture, his father's hand rested on his mother's shoulder, both of them squinting in the sun, the plants behind them tall and green. No dust, no uniforms, no rifles.
Emmanuel glanced down.
"Your land?" he asked.
"Yes," Ade said. "We plant in the rainy season, harvest if the rains don't cheat us."
"In Cazanda, we used to plant too," Emmanuel said. "Then the mine expanded. They took the land and gave us jobs for two months, then nothing. Now they say we should be happy the company brings 'development.'"
He made a small, bitter laugh.
"They developed our river into something you can't drink," he said.
A whistle shrieked outside.
"Form up!" shouted a different voice. "Training ground. Now."
They spilled out into the yard, forming crooked lines under the hammering sun. An older lieutenant walked along the front, eyes sharp, moustache trimmed.
"I am Lieutenant Nnamdi," he said. "Before the war, they called me a 'peacekeeper' in other countries. I wore a blue helmet, took pictures with foreigners. Now I am home, teaching you not to shame me when you go to the front."
He nodded toward the far side of the yard, where a group of soldiers in full gear jogged in from the gate, faces slick with sweat, boots slamming the ground in unison.
"You see them?" Nnamdi said. "They have been to the hills. They have seen what happens when you hesitate. When you point your rifle at the sky in fear instead of at the enemy in front of you."
One of the returning soldiers stumbled, caught himself, straightened. Ade saw that he was not much older than they were.
"You will meet many enemies," Nnamdi went on. "Rebels who call themselves liberators. Bandits who call themselves businessmen. Foreigners who call themselves advisors. Some wear uniforms. Some wear suits. Some wear rags. Do not be fooled by clothes."
He looked directly at Ade's line.
"But you must also remember, that every bullet you fire lands somewhere. In a tree. In a fence. In a wall. In a person. A person who had a name before you called him 'target.' If you cannot control your fear, you will shoot everything. Then there will be no country left to defend."
A murmur ran through the recruits. The message was strange—both hard and soft at once. Ade's uncle had spoken similarly, in fewer words.
Nnamdi clapped once.
"Now we march," he said. "Left. Right. Until your legs remember even when your head is empty."
They spent the next hours under the sun, feet stumbling in dust, shoulders burning. Sergeants shouted. A recruit tripped and fell; someone laughed until Yakubu's glare silenced him.
By midday, Ade's shirt clung to his back. Sweat stung his eyes. His thoughts blurred into the rhythm of commands.
"Again," Nnamdi said. "War is repetition and patience. Waiting in heat and rain. You must learn to be tired and still move."
When the whistle finally blew for a break, they slumped under the thin shade of the acacia trees. A plastic barrel of water stood in the center. They queued, cups shaking in their hands.
Emmanuel wiped his face with the back of his arm.
"Do you know where they'll send us?" he asked.
Ade shook his head. "North, I suppose."
"I was north," Emmanuel said quietly. "Before I came here. Running messages for the youth committee in Cazanda. They told me the army was the enemy. Now the army tells me the rebels are the enemy. Maybe we are just enemies to ourselves."
Kofi thought of the letter with the coat of arms. Of his mother's hands on the stall, tying bags. Of his uncle's radio crackling with news of "clashes" and "operations."
"I just want to stay alive," he said.
Emmanuel nodded. "Same. But they keep moving the line where staying alive ends and killing begins."
A bell clanged near the mess hall.
"Food," someone called. "Before it finishes."
They filed toward the low building, metal trays in hand. The smell of beans and bitter leaf soup drifted out, thick and comforting.
As Ade stepped inside, he noticed a bulletin board near the entrance, covered with notices. Training schedules, Curfew times