Word: harmattan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...covered Africa for TIME from the mid-1960s to 1971, including the Biafra revolt in Nigeria, was back in that country last week to report on the sudden military coup. He got there, barely, in a small chartered plane from the Ivory Coast. "Over Lagos," says Wilde, "the harmattan, a dust-laden wind blowing from the Sahara, had reduced visibility to 500 yds. On our first try at landing, one wing nearly scraped the runway; we began to stall. But our nerveless Ivorian pilot gunned the motor, and the plane lifted, shuddering. We made it on the second pass...
...aboard, several plunged into the harbor; at least one drowned. "It was crazy," said a Nigerian port official. "Fights broke out, and the police had a hard job controlling the crowd." Those who missed the first ship camped out amid gathering piles of garbage, grateful for the harmattan, a breeze of Saharan dust that blotted out the sun and kept temperatures down from the usual 90° F. Women nursed babies in the shadow of cargo sheds, while vendors of fruit, bread and illegally distilled local spirits set their wares out in the open...