You know you are in Africa when:
-Landing at a former military airfield the remaining guard force mounts a full parade for you and expects you to inspect them.
-Or in another instance you are arrested and have a number of loaded AK47s pointed at you for walking too close to an old AN26 which probably was destroyed 20yrs previous, all this besides the fact you are at the field to pick up the Minister of Defense, who with much arguing manages to have you released.
-You get arrested because your client has put down on his import sheet that he has 70 rounds of ammunition when he only has 69. Poor man had to watch as his pilot was dragged off in handcuffs and interegated for the next 2hrs. Welcome to Africa
-All the pilots are summoned to the local airport to watch a demonstration put on by the fire brigade and they promptly put their aging truck straight through the back wall of the garage. End of demonstration.
-When you are stuck on the apron for a minimum of 2hrs with a plane full of sweating and angry pax waiting for an aging dictator to slowly make his way to his commandeered from the local airline for him, for permission to start up, all the while surrounded by police and army armed to the teeth.
-You have to get permission from the presidents office or the intelligence organisation every time you want to take of from a certain airport.
-You take over from the controller at a field as they have more than 2 aircraft in their circuit and have gone to pieces, so you decide to hell with this and do the controlling yourself.
-Landing at a runway you are informed by the tower that there is 600m unusable of a 1400m strip, which is not a problem if they could tell you where the unusable bit is, but there is the inevitable language barrier and in the end you decide to do a low flypast under the pretense of a GA and the controller threatens to report you for doing a GA. Much to ones amazement you find the unusable bit of the runway is almost right in the middle, so you decide maybe better to land somewhere else rather.
-When you are fined USD250 for landing after 5pm local even though the airport is open till 0200 the following morning for the national airline.
Yet having said that there is no where else in the world I would rather fly, and over the years have had a wonderful time for the most part.