Nigeria
I spent one year in two jobsites in the bush near Port Harcourt in 1994. The more you live there, the more you get used to many things that in the "western" world are considered unacceptable, dangerous and unusual.
Some examples:
We had only HF radio in the camp, sat phone was not provided, cell phones too.
From time to time I used to travel by car in the bush to reach the closest phone center.
It was normal to get stopped with tree trunks across the track in the middle of the bush by groups of people beating the Oybo (so they call white men) cars with machetes.
The first time was terrifying. Then I realised that at each "checkpoint" I had to give some naira to pass safely.
Never spent more than few hours in the cities.
My colleagues told me that Lagos and Port Harcourt were much more dangerous than the bush.
I got malaria twice, the "good one" (plasmodium falciparum), the cure was worse than the first stage of the disease.
For the very first two weeks I had to stay very close to the toilet, learned what I could eat or drink and what I could not.
I learned also to avoid aphta, fungus and parasites.
Even if you hold a valid driving license, you'd better hire a driver if you travel in the bush. If you are whit and you drive, in the case you kill a kid crossing the road, It is not safe to wait for the locals.
Money can buy almost everything (legal or illegal).
Maybe many things have changed bynow...
Never been in Afghanistan, I worked in much safer places (Saudi Arabia and Syria). In middle east it was useful some times to look like a local and of course much easier than in africa. People always talked to me in arabic first...