He has been sent to "iffy" places before

[DFW]

He was working in the Kano-Abuja area of Nigeria for a while. This is the Hausa-speaking area, and the part where Boko Haram, the Islamist militant group, operated. He looked very out of place wearing a dashiki, but he obviously got along very well with the locals--a VERY wise thing to do when working in such an area. A diminutive kid with decidedly east Asian features looks very out of place alongside a bunch of tall Africans, but he obviously somehow managed to fit right in. Maybe being able to read out loud from the Koran in the original helps, who knows? I am not aware that Hausa and Arabic have any similarity at all, but then I don't speak either, so I am the last person to ask.