Originally Posted by TonyWilliams

I spent two years in Lagos. It's a complete and utter garbage hole that I hope to never return to (unless somebody wants to pay me way-too-much money).

Having said that, we did have some great parties and fun times. I got malaria the first week I was there. Not fun... I survived. I would trust the doctors in Nigeria to handle malaria before doctors in the USA.

It's hot and dry-ish in the winter with Harmattan (1) conditions and hotter and really wet the rest of the time. You're only a few degrees north of the equator, so if you're hair challenged, wear a hat. The sun will burn straight through your head to your toes! Oh, I almost forgot about the huge thunderstorms. Loads of them. And the worst ATC anywhere on planet earth. By far.

I played lot of golf while I was there. It's relatively cheap and a nice distraction from a crazy place.

Traveling at night is guaranteed to go through armed road blocks and police questioning. Gun shots are normal. One hotel that I stayed at (Atlantic) found several dozen bullets on their property over the years.

One pilot that I flew with was attacked in his room by thugs / robbers. I had a cab driver try to drive away with me once (I physically jumped out with my bags when traffic slowed the car). Yelling and screaming, horn honking, and general mayhem... all normal.

Dead bodies that are scattered about is a near regular event. The first one I saw was dead on the highway, naked. That's right; they stole the clothes off the dead man in the roadway. But they won't officially "touch" or move him, because that might make them liable to the family. So, the dead guy just stays there.

There are huge cultural, race and religious issues that have lead to mass slaughters of people. We had a B737 crew in Maiduguri when more than 800 people died in June 2009. Bodies all over the place when the crew took the shuttle bus from the hotel to the airport and were stopped by the police.

Boko Haram precedes the ISIS / ISIL stuff by many years. We had a crew robbed at gun point in front of the hotel in Lagos. They are weird about pictures... some of it is custom, but officially, you can't take pictures of police. They can and have taken cameras. One pilot lost his this way.

They eat dogs. They eat ox tail. The cabs are total pieces of garbage. The busses are too scary to even get on. They ride on the top of the train (like India). The cheap, Chinese built motorcycles are called "okadas", and I'm told that many of those folks are killed daily. I've personally seen them smashed in every way imaginable... under cars, pushed into the asphalt, etc.

Life has little meaning. I was in a private van, returning from the beach with others when a little car passed us going about 70-80mph. He lost control of the car, swerved off the road and hit a tree. His body was catapulted through the windscreen. Our driver never slowed down, or looked, or asked any questions. He just continued driving as if nothing happened.

Getting diarrhea is almost sport. I carried prescription level drugs in my flight bag. I also carried the immediate action pills for malaria. And vitamins. Both of those tend to dehydrate you, plus the heat doesn't help, so drink a lot of water daily.

Walking in to any expat club / bar that has local females is a virtual guarantee that they are all prostitutes. AIDS is rampant in Africa.

People urninate and defacate in the streets. Regularly. One early experience was walking out of the hotel and seeing a woman dropping a deuce in the middle of the street. Next to her was a dead rat that had been run over 100 times. Don't even think about drinking the water!!!

The local venacular of the Queen's english can be a challenge to understand. My first time in the cockpit there had a guy asking me about "fool". It took a few quite animated tries for him to convey to me that he wanted to know how much fuel we needed.

Anyhoo, if you get paid and get out alive / not sick, it's all good.



(1) The Harmattan is a hot, dry and dusty wind blowing over West Africa. This northeasterly wind blows from the Sahara Desert into the Gulf of Guinea between the end of November and the middle of March

Originally Posted by vagabond

This makes malaria and dengue fever look like fun.'

Originally Posted by maddogmax

The crews are transported to the hotel in two separate vans with guards armed with AK-47's. They stop for nothing. You do not leave the hotel. One guy walked across the street to buy beer and came back in his underwear. He was lucky. Malaria is also a big concern. I know of one Delta Captain that died and two FO's that barely made it. Not worth the money

Originally Posted by M696

I'm sitting by the pool drinking a beer in Abuja, no issues. There are two German girls crewing a lear 40, very diverse group of pilots based here.