I didn't 'leave...'
I got 'retired!' I freely admit that I would still be there, moaning away, but for the strange workings of fate. Don't think that I am making myself out to be cleverer than anyone still there in what I write here. One part of me, the sensible part, thinks, 'Good to be gone,' while the silly part keeps thinking about getting an offer to go back.
Starting with turning down an offer to become a Catholic altar boy and ending, pretty much, with rather perversely going into aviation instead of commercial real estate with my extended family I have been fleeing holiness all my life. I had to go all the way to Nigeria to hang with the expats found there to be holier than just about anything. You can find dogs that are holier than me!
Anyone who wants to get deeply involved with modern Nigeria, well, that's very romantic (in the larger sense of that word, where you seek to realise your vision with something external to you).
Think of T. E. Lawrence flouncing around in his Bedouin robes: that's the sort of romantic I mean. He was okay until he fell in love with motorcycles; if he had stuck to camels he would have been okay.
To take on Nigeria with all its problems just seems like trying to eat your way through 20 kilos of 'suya' at one sitting. But that's just being practical, which is boringly unromantic. To end up the guardian of a sacred grove, well, it probably beats tending your petunias in some German garden allotment.