https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1317688/posts
Many years ago, as we prepared our return to a tough posting in the Far Abroad after leave in the States, our son asked, “Do we have to go back to the ‘turd’ world?” That phrase, “redolent” with the wisdom possessed only by children, has stayed with me over these passing years. My son was right about the ‘turd’ world. What tips you off that you have arrived in a poor country, a truly, genuinely dirt-poor corner of the Far Abroad, is the smell. As you leave the airport, you notice a special “exotic” odor of rotting vegetation, garbage, and feces combined with a slight whiff of smoke.
Been there, done that many times. I have traveled a good deal of the world in my former occupation. I said many times that the only place you can live like an American is right here. Some places came close and some I enjoyed, some were actually better but I would not move there for one reason or another.
I was in a contractor’s office in Lagos one morning. It was in the better part of the city. As I drank my coffee waiting for the meeting to start I watched the sunrise across the large inlet to the bay there on the sea side of the first mainland bridge. I observed the piles of trash on each pier of the bridge and the swirling currents and wondered how deep the bottom scour was on the bridge footings. I then noticed a swirling eddy in a corner of the adjacent wharf where I saw a dead cow and a dead human in the swirl of trash and other things. Just another day in paradise.
Even parts of the First World can be redolent. I served two years at Yokota AB, Japan,, 1984 - 1986, when I was in the USAF. The farms around both ends of the runway were fertilized with fresh manure. For a week or two a year the base was indeed redolent.
Yokota had its good points. Many of the Japanese electronics factories were within twenty miles. Last years stocks of consumer electronics were seriously marked down. $2000 Nakamichi Dragon cassette tape player marked down to under $1000.