Check with my guru...
Well, one of them, anyway!
Musket 33 nailed this when he wrote about how one becomes acclimated.
I have been a bit of a bore about that gun attack. Put it in perspective in this way, if you like: There were six people on that bus. It is just that I am the only one to bother writing about it. Of the six:
The Nigerian Driver is still driving. Wife, kids, best job he can hope for.
The English Contract Engineer freaked out, left, came back to 'face (his) demons' and then left.
The Filipino Greenie is still working there. I guess it must be another wife, kids, etc.
The English pilot, lucky not to have been crippled by being shot in the arsal region, took a long time off, came back and then quit. He had plenty of options, I think.
The Malaysian Chinese pilot, again lucky not to have been much more seriously wounded, is still there. Not to be too harsh but I always found him to be a guy who thought money was his most valuable asset. He was happy to come back to Nigeria after having been rifted.
Me, I had plenty of options that I just didn't want to take. The whole saga has been extensively covered in these pages, of course. I got pushed out, basically and then barred from returning. It was mainly down to a certain German being very stupid, but that's what he does best. Here and now it looks as though I would have to be more stupid than that to go back there but I cannot put my hand on my heart and say that I turned down an offer.
Now I am under a lot of stress trying to come up to the mark for a British CAA Instrument Rating test. Everything I did for 15 400+ hours was badly wrong and must be discarded. Never mind that. The interesting point for you guys is that I see all the stress symptoms I had during my time in Lagos have returned. I have been told not to drink any more (well, one glass of white whine a day, which is not worth the bother) so that I just have to tough it out, but test passed, Inshallah, I shall be back to living without stress, relatively speaking.
My God, I was living with that for years and years and it literally made me sick. Why? In large part, just as Musket 33 pointed out, it was because Nigeria was my little world in which I had my place and knew how to function. I liked Nigerian people even when they were doing their level best to cheat me, only drawing the line at trying to shoot me.
It might be worth taking that jump. I cannot say, because I was pushed. Of course, first I did wind up the pusher something rotten! Who knows? Perhaps there was something within me that wanted out of Nigeria.
You look at all the guys who crawl into a bottle, knowing that might get them sacked; do you suppose some of them really just want out without having to walk in and quit? I always had that idea about some of the guys I knew.