When you no longer look anything like your passport photo (or more likely look worse than your passport photo)
When you start trying to check yourself out in any remotely reflective surface as you forget what you look like since you haven’t seen yourself in a mirror for so long
When you get a real shock when you manage to actually find a mirror to look at yourself
When you no longer care how disgusting you look
When you let anyone cut your hair and don’t care how stupid the resulting ‘style’
When you still carry around toilet paper in your pocket, just in case
When you would rather pee in the bush than an actual toilet
When you have to go for a pee as soon as you hear a truck engine start as it could be your last one for several hours
When you’re no longer embarrassed going for a pee on the side of the road with minimum or no cover and with locals watching
When you wish for once the locals wouldn’t treat you as a spectator sport or reality TV show
When you continue to talk to complete strangers about the state of your poo (consistency, frequency, etc.)
When you’ve had some discussions with strangers that you’ve never even dared to have with your best friend or close family
When you begin to prefer your Thermarest over a mattress
When you scope out flat areas of land and people’s lawns and think how they would be a great place to camp
When your clothes no longer fit or get fully clean
When you forget to change your clothes for an entire week
When all your clothes are traditional local outfits and people start mistaking you for a local
When you wear your headtorch out as an accessory
When your standards of mankiness drop to a whole new level and general mankiness becomes perfectly acceptable
When your standards on everything hit rock bottom
When you lose all your modesty, thinking nothing of showering in a line next to three others of the same sex (and even preferring to have showers with others of the same sex instead of alone)
When you no longer care about how manky you (and your feet) are or when your last shower was
When your conversations revolve around when your last shower actually was (and if you’re lucky enough, how hot it was)
When you shower in whatever water source available, no matter how manky
When ‘manky’ becomes one of your most used words
When you’ve perfected the art of the bottle shower (1.5 litres of water for hair and body)
When ‘baby wipe showers’ or ‘bottle showers’ become a social event
When you value cold beer more than a cold shower
When you feel clean even after a petrol bath
When you think you have a good tan but then take a shower and lose it all as it’s actually just a thick layer of dust and grime
When you need three showers to get fully clean and then still find dirt to rub off
When every body part has been bitten at some stage
When you have to go to the doctor to check if you have sleeping sickness, malaria, worms AND bilharzia
When talking about de-worming yourself doesn’t phase you, even over lunch
When you think nothing of ‘floor sucking’ drinks or eating food off a manky truck floor
When you eat a fried egg off the dirt after giving it a quick rinse, assuring everyone ‘It’s still good!’
When you find it appropriate to use a bin lid as a dinner table
When you forget how to cook without a fire
When you accidentally buy 2kgs of potatoes for a meal for two
When you get overly excited by airline cheese, packet butter and chilled wine in a glass bottle
When you get overly excited by airline meals in general – hello, BA/ComAir served haloumi sandwiches on nice wholemeal bread AND you get a small chocolate bar – heaven!
When you eat a meal composed entirely of Tesco’s economy tins
When you talk obsessively about food that you know you cannot get for a long time
When you continue to flap your dishes dry
When you get excited by stopping at petrol stations as it means snacks, cold beers and soft drinks, and a ‘proper’ toilet with running water
When you have to think twice about which side of the road to drive on
When you wake up and have no idea where you are
When you forget what country you’re in
When you forget what day of the week it us (but it doesn’t really matter as there are only two days of the week – Lariam Monday and every other day is a Saturday)
When you keep calling every currency ‘dirka-dirkas’, even your own
When you welcome flies as long as nothing is biting you
When you no longer care about the filth, the tinned food, or the lack of showers; all you want is a night without a plague of insects
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