Twenty ways you know you've been living in Nigeria for too long...

1. You automatically flush a toilet with a bucket of water rather than trying the flush.
2. You find yourself sitting in the dark even though the electricity is on.
3. You think nothing of watching a pirated DVD where for most of the film your vision is obscured by the outline of the people who were sat in front of whoever was illegally filming it. You also get the added benefit of a unique soundtrack - the sounds of people laughing/coughing/talking in the background.
4. It’s normal to drink all of your water out of a plastic bag.
5. You crave the smell of Raid because it’s associated with the slow (and hopefully painful) death of the cockroaches that make you want to climb up walls to avoid them.
6. You think nothing of not having running water for half the week.
7. You see a washing machine at the British Village and wonder how easily you could get away with bringing your weekly washing there without anyone noticing.
8. You stop thinking your hair falling out is a strange occurrence.
9. You stop worrying about getting into a car which smells overwhelmingly of petrol, feels like it has at least one tyre that is about to fall off, has a massive crack across the windscreen, doesn’t appear to have working brakes. The list goes on. Anyone considering introducing MOTs to Nigeria would be a brave soul.
10. You stop expecting police checkpoints to involve the police actually CHECKING something, and start seeing them more as a means for the police to earn some extra pocket money.
11. You make plans but no longer expect them to happen as arranged. If anything it is always a nice surprise if things do actually go as they’re meant to. I noticed the other day that I had started saying things like “I am meant to get back to Abuja on….” Or “He is meant to be coming to see me on…” Everything has become a possibility rather than a certainty. This is more a method of preserving my sanity than anything else. The less I count on things happening as they should, the less chance of me being disappointed when things don’t go as planned.
12. You can’t sleep without being under a mosquito net.
13. Washing your clothes in a bucket has started to seem normal.
14. Walking into a shop and paying a fixed price for something seems strange.
15. You no longer find it odd when you’re sat at work and people around you suddenly burst into song. Or prayer. Or both.
16. You find yourself adopting the habit of making ridiculously obvious statements like ‘you’re back’ when someone walks through the door.
17. You crave fried yam.
18. You crave beer (this might not seem that odd, but coming from someone who never drunk beer before coming here, it surprised me)
19. You develop the ability to work in an environment that would make Waterloo train station seem peaceful and quiet. No one does anything quietly in this country.
20. You forget what colour your feet are meant to be.