You know you're back in Africa when. . .

OK – so after my first few days here in Nigeria, here’s my list of seven favorite ways to complete the sentence: “You know you’re back in Africa when. . .”

7. Your arriving flight descends below 10,000 feet, you immediately feel the bumps and turbulence of the hot thermals generated over the hot African plain.

6. You no longer can see the horizon because of the harmatan conditions in the lower atmosphere with all the fine airborne sand from the Sahara Desert.

5. Staying your first night at a very clean, well-scrubbed room at a Catholic Guesthouse, you are still greeted by a couple of cockroaches lying on their backs on the floor with little legs flaying in the air.

4. You lose all electric power during an evening meal in the dining room and everyone (including yourself) whips out a pocket flashlight and keeps right on eating their meal without giving it an extra thought.

3. Your morning shower consists of pouring water over yourself from a cutoff water bottle dipped into a bucket of water you filled at a hand-pump well 50 feet from your front door.

2. You experience the “Jos Revenge” just hours after eating dinner at a local restaurant.

And my favorite one of all…

1.   Your Lufthansa Airbus 330 airliner lands at the international airport of the capital city of the most populous country in Africa but the tower forgets to inform the pilot that construction is occurring on one of the taxiways so the plane gets stuck on the runway for 30 minutes until a tow truck can be rounded up to push the plane back down the runway to the next usable taxiway!