UPDATE: It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

I asked Ade (our driver) what was in the air, "Is that fog, is it raining?"

"This is Christmas weather. It means Christmas is coming," he answered. In other words, the harmattan has arrived.

Harmattan is a dry, dusty West African trade wind. It blows south from the Sahara into the Gulf of Guinea between the end of November and the middle of March. On its passage over the desert it picks up fine dust particles and drops most of them, apparently, on Nigeria.

I had heard about harmattan and was expecting it, but wasn't sure this is what I was seeing. It looks like a rain cloud or a cool morning fog, not a brown dust cloud like you would expect.

So while our view looked like this a few months ago...

Today, it looks like this.

It must be Christmas season!

UPDATE: Today (6-Dec.), it looked like this:

Now you can't even see the cell phone tower!

Here's a fun game... Can you find the sun in this picture?
It's there! Er, at least I think it is!