Exactly.

To my surprise Writer Girl Summer really worked out. I went from being a Substack skeptic to a fan. And I managed to almost double my subscriber count.

So, in celebration, I’m sharing what worked for me.

Before we get started, it’s important to note that when I say almost doubled, I mean I went from 323 to 633 in three months. Not 1M to 2M or anything crazy. Just trying to keep your expectations reasonable here. But this is part of WHY I wanted to write this article. I’m a normal Substacker. Outside of this article, I write about travel and my life as an American expat in Nigeria.

When I was searching for articles on how to grow, I had a hard time finding one from someone who was not a Substack coach or growth “expert.” And many of them were clickbaity, full of pay funnels and even cringey.

So here ya go. Plain, simple, not paywalled. Here’s what worked for me: Notes. They’re a simple, free sound bite on what you wanna say to the world. These are my tips on how to use them to grow and honestly improve your entire Substack experience.

1. You gotta start somewhere, but don’t write into a void.

For a good while when I posted on notes I would get nothing. Not a single heart. Not a single comment.

It felt like writing into a void, because I was. No one was seeing my notes.

And this is probably where a lot of people give up. But please don’t!

You just need a small group of solid Substack friends to get you going. My best advice for meeting these people is to do a notes challenge. A lot of Substack growth coaches offer them and sometimes you do have to pay to get into them, but for me this was worth it.

I did Sarah Fay’s notes challenge and can’t recommend it enough. That’s where I found my first few Substack friends. Once I had a solid core group I was able to finally build some momentum.

2. I took the summer to lean in.

I recognized early on that for once, I actually had some margin for writing and decided to make the most of it. I spent a whole day reading articles on how to grow using notes. Some said to post 1 per day, others said 5-7 per day. So, the first challenge was sifting through this mixed advice.

Yes, I had the margin, but also had two kids, was working to re-lease our Texas house and wanted to enjoy my summer so I went with 1-3 per day. If it was a busy day, 1 was fine. If I had lots of time and ideas, I wrote 3.

No guilt for less or celebration for more. I decided Writer Girl Summer was about being serious about writing, while also prioritizing my actual non-writing life.

In addition to leaning into my own notes, I leaned into other people’s. If someone commented, I commented back. I would check them out, maybe even follow or subscribe if it resonated with me.

At first this felt like work, but I started to love it because I realized I was learning from other writers and articles (see the amazing baggage tip on the note below). This is gold!

Subscribe now

3. Your notes have to be quality but shouldn’t take much time.

This feels contradictory but stay with me.

Many articles I read said to try to stay between 50-120 words with notes, so in general I do try to do that. But I also don’t stress if I’m slightly over or under. Human emotion isn’t restricted by word count. And that’s what we’re going for here. One human connecting with another human.

Say something real. Tell us something true you didn’t want to admit. Or something you’re scared of. Ask us a fun question about what you write about (for me this is travel and life abroad.)

Don’t overthink it.

If your note took more than 15 minutes to create, you’re thinking too hard. If you’re consulting with AI you’re not thinking hard enough. It’s not that I think there’s no place for AI in writing or editing (that’s a whole different article though), it’s just that we want to hear from YOU!

My best performing note, which actually ended up going viral, was a short, heartwarming story, rather than a travel tip or gorgeous picture. You can read the full story behind it here.

The thing is little heartwarming stories are more challenging for me to write than travel tips, but because this one did so well, I still try to challenge my writer muscles every few notes and write one. None have touched how well this one did so far, though.

4. Find your lane(ish).

I watched my performance on each note. Not in a highly technical, NASA spreadsheet type of way, but in an overall what’s working for me? kind-of-way. Because Writer Girl Summer wasn’t about becoming neurotic. It was about figuring something out as a real human person, not a robot.

For me, aside from my viral note, I learned that travel and simple notes about my life in West Africa seemed to resonate best (see examples below). This was one of my most pivotal observations, because then I had a topic to work from which really helped me think of more ideas for notes and how to frame what I wanted to say.

Note linked HERE.

Note linked HERE.

I don’t think that you should NEVER post anything outside of your “topic.” After all, we’re all human beings that are experiencing this wonderful, chaotic and sometimes hard thing called life, but in general, allow your topic to help frame up the majority of your notes. I found this to be really helpful.

5. You don’t get to decide what a note does once you release it!

This goes for all writing but remember, it’s about how it lands for the reader, not how you felt about it.

Some of the notes I thought were the best went nowhere, and the note that went viral, I thought would get 2 likes.

Here’s what’s important: you wrote the note and it’s in the universe.

You released it.

You did your job.

Now let it go.

A side note to this point: Viral isn’t the goal.

Don’t get me wrong, going viral was awesome. It was very validating. I even had a floral shop reach out to me and offer to send me a bouquet of flowers in exchange for allowing them to share my story on their page. And for a real hot-second, I felt like an actual influencer.

But I’ve read in many places (and Sarah Fay also echoes this) that if your goal is to build a quality community, you don’t need to go viral. In fact, sometimes going viral just adds subscribers who aren’t engaged at all.

What you should aim for is consistent, quality notes that can help you find and build an engaged community.

In the end, numbers aren’t my biggest win from Writer Girl Summer. I really thought that would be. But my biggest win is that I genuinely love the connections I’ve made. And I feel like I’ve even been able to travel through their pictures and stories in a weird but real way.

The camaraderie I’ve found here also makes Substack a lovely platform to be on. Out of the 28,000+ likes I got on my viral note, I can count the ugly comments I received on one hand. That’s pretty unique.

As an expat, I spend my summers in the states, but Writer Girl Summer surprised me, because while being in my own home country, I feel like my whole world grew a little.

P.S.

If you’re wondering how I ended up as an American expat living in Nigeria, I share that full story here.

P.P.S.

In an effort to pay it forward, I want to shout out a few of my OG Substack friends. I’m honored to be doing this writer journey with them and all of you!

1. Vivian. She is such a rockstar and fellow expat living in Portugal, but NYC lover at heart. Also, an organization and down-sizing guru. She writes both The Expat Diaries and How to Stuff Your Home.

2. Greg and Tammy from Postcards At Our Pace. They are those crazy people who sold all their stuff and are traveling the world! Omg. Life goals. I love hearing about their travel ambitions and all about their cute dog Brody too.

I’m sitting in seat 33C which happens to be in the last row and conveniently right next to the bathrooms. Sometimes we pay for good seats, other times we pay the consequences. That’s travel life, I suppose.

For the new subscribers here, welcome!

I typically send a newsletter once a month to tell you about the shenanigans of my American expat-life in Nigeria. (This is the one about Adventures, this one is an Afro-beat dance class review, and because I know you’re wondering, this is how we got to Nigeria in the first place.)

But because I spend summers stateside, I share an annual levity list each July.

By my made-up definition, a levity list is “a list of non-critical recommendations to help invoke critical emotions like hope and joy.”

So, without further ado, let the July 2026 Levity List begin!

A few of the links below are affiliate links, which means I earn a small commission off them, at no extra cost to you. (I’m working to offset my coffee addiction!)

1. This is the story of how a simple, but generous act of friendship went viral (and is still going!)

Since we met 15 years ago, my friend Angela has been my hype girl. It doesn’t matter what I’m working on, she just believes in me. As a writer, this can feel critical.

We had just finished visiting each other for the weekend. Ironically, she kept saying we needed to do something to go viral, a comment I laughed off.

Fast forward to the following Thursday, the boys and I had to catch a flight to Detroit. Before boarding the plane, I was on my Substack app and all was normal. Then I flew, lost wifi, and turned the app back on 2.5 hours later.

To my shock I had 99 notifications!

I thought maybe it was a glitch. Or that I had gone viral?

But instead, Angela had liked every post and note I’d ever written.

As of this writing it has over 22,000 likes and 313 restacks. I’m both shocked and full of gratitude.

Angela and I decided we’re both going to print and frame it in celebration of the time we actually went viral. Friendship is more lifegiving than fame any day.

So, my recommendation is to go support a friend today in some way. Likes, follows and shares are free to you and mean more than you know for the recipient.

2. The Timeshifter app.

If you travel across time zones, I highly recommend using Timeshifter. As the “#1 Jetlag app,” this app asks questions about where you’re at, where you’re headed and then gives you a schedule for caffeine, sleep and even when to wear or not wear sunglasses!

I used it for the first time this May, when we were traveling from Nigeria back to the USA for the summer, and it absolutely saved me a few days of jet lag misery.

It’s a paid app, but the first plan is free, so it’s worth a try.

3. Health coaching

My friend Gretchen, who also lives in our camp in Nigeria, is a certified health coach who offers 1:1 coaching to reach your health goals. In addition to coaching her clients, she does weekly check in calls, works to help create meal plans, and provides individualized exercise ideas.

In her words, “my job is to help you lead a healthier lifestyle with better habits related to food, movement and daily activities.”

Gretchen is also a fabulous person and friend, so if you’re wanting to work on a health goal, I can’t recommend her enough. You can reach out to her on Instagram here or you can email her at gretchen.thibodeaux@gmail.com.

4. Birkenstocks. Birks have been perfect for life in Nigeria, where it’s always hot, but I still need comfortable shoes with some support.

I love THIS pair, because they have a slight wedge and are slightly dressier ( and I do mean slightly) than the traditional flat ones.

But I also LOVE this pair for more casual wear (this is most of my days in Nigeria). My green ones have been worn almost daily for 3 years and I just bought a pair in black!

5. Toy Story 5

We don’t have a traditional movie theatre experience in Nigeria. We used to go to one near camp that smelled like a gym, but the last time we tried was a total fail.

We waited over an hour and had to move to 3 different viewing rooms, but they still couldn’t get the movie to play. All the movies there are bootleg versions, and they indicated that they’d accidently downloaded a corrupted file. This shocked no one.

All that to say, when in America, we love going to a good movie. And Toy Story 5 was both heartwarming and relevant.

6. Speaking of Nigeria, Carry Them Ministries , is a non-profit organization based in Northern Nigeria.

   They work to nourish and save the lives of malnourished babies in their area. The dedication they have to their clients and the babies they serve is inspiring.

   You can give them a follow on Instagram here. They are one of my favorite follows.

7. Away Luggage

Confession. When we first moved abroad, a friend told me we needed good luggage and recommended Away. But when I saw the price of them and figured we’d be fine.

Fast forward to our Christmas trip to Europe when we found ourselves dragging 10-year-old luggage through cobblestone streets. The first thing we did upon arriving home was invest in all new luggage.

We’ve never regretted it.

I recommend this one for a good carry-on, this one for a medium luggage size (some bigger planes will allow this as a carry on, but the smaller ones will make it you check it), and this one for a really nice size checked bag. The trunk holds so much, so we use it when we know we want to bring home a lot.

8. This strawberry necklace from Noonday.

I bought this thinking it would be an occasional piece for just a few specific outfits. But I quickly fell in love and started wearing it with everything. I get compliments every time I have it on, apparently people love a mini-strawberry. It turns out the exact one I found is sold out, but this one is similar, just a little bigger.

9. Supergoop Play Sunscreen stick

As a redhead, who owns a small human who is also a redhead, I’m a major sunscreen snob. This summer I discovered the Play stick. It’s quickly become my favorite sunscreen product, even my kids like to put it on.

My favorite thing about it isn’t how easy it is to put on, or how light weight it feels, but the smell. This is one of the first sunscreens I’ve found that doesn’t smell like sunscreen, instead, it smells like a hint of oranges. We’re sold.

My flight is going to land soon.

It’s completely full, and turns out, everyone on board had to go to the bathroom. Seriously, it’s never been so popular.

Perhaps everyone ate lettuce recently?

I have no idea.

My arm space has been compromised as I’ve turned into a sort of human bumper between the walkway and the restroom door. My concentration has been compromised as well, since each flush sounds like a minor explosion.

But writing this levity list has been a fun distraction. Which brings me to my final point.

10. Substack and more specifically, you.

Writing is a joy and I’m honored you’re reading along. If you enjoyed this levity list, I’d love it if you’d hit the heart button or share it with a friend. There’s no bigger compliment than that.

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I’d love to hear what’s on your levity list this summer in the comments.

Cheers!

Brittany

PS.

Don’t forget to do #1!

PPS.

For those of you who’ve been around awhile, you may notice this post is early. I’ll be traveling to Croatia during the actual first Monday of the month (when my posts traditionally come out) as we are spending our last week of summer in Dubrovnik.

This is likely our last school year in Nigeria, so we’re cramming in as much travel as possible! I have all the feelings about this transition, but that’s a post for another day.

We do love Jesus, but to be clear, we’re here for the paycheck, the travel, and the career opportunity.

Of course, I don’t say that.

In American culture, it’s strangely taboo to admit you did something for money. I find this ironic, because so much of our culture is motivated by capitalism.

Instead, I say we’re here for my husband’s job, which is also true, and seems to be more acceptable.

I’ve since learned the term for such a person is “expat.” In general, I find expats fall into 3 categories:

1. Lifestyle expats. People who move for a better life. It could be culture, scenery, cost of living or love.

2. Mission-driven expats. People who serve a cause bigger than themselves. Missionaries, Peace Corps volunteers, the military and researchers.

3. Career expats. People who moved for career potential and paychecks. This is us.

The question I wrestle with is whether being in the latter category makes us the worst type of expat.

I feel this sometimes. That out of all three we’re somehow morally inferior. We’re not following any big passion, nor are we saving lives or curing diseases. Instead, we’re just here hoping to pay off our mortgage, fund our kids’ college and maybe, just maybe, add a pool to our backyard in Texas.

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Saving money has been great, but it hasn’t come without a price. The daily lifestyle tradeoffs are real and relentless. And sometimes I wonder if it’s all been worth it.

Our company house in Lagos is perpetually broken. It is 40 years old and has never had preventive maintenance. They will repair things only after they have broken, imploded and then caught on fire.

Additionally, the team my husband’s company contracts to “fix things,” typically cause more problems than they alleviate. Last time they came to fix our AC, they flooded the kitchen. And when they located where the leak was coming from, I kid you not, they DUCT TAPED it until it was no longer dripping.

This is my real life.

In Lagos, for safety reasons, my kids travel on a bus to school which is sandwiched in between 2 armed-security cars as kidnapping is a real threat.

The paycheck. The career opportunity. Maybe, one day, even a pool. Those are the reasons we endure all of this.

Of course there’s been some unforeseen and wonderful surprises. I’ve learned that I love traveling. We’ve met the best of friends on our compound and within our school. I’m continually inspired by the resourcefulness and resilience of Nigerians.

But those aren’t the reason we came. They’re gifts we didn’t expect to receive.

Some people move because they’re in love.

Some people move because they feel God called them to.

Some people move because there was a good career opportunity.

And as ordinary, boring or even selfish as that sounds, I think it’s OK.

Because your reason for coming doesn’t determine the kind of person who you’ll be when you arrive. None of these motives guarantee you’ll be a good neighbor, help the local people, learn the local language or contribute something meaningful to the host society.

That part is up to you after you arrive. And to be honest, it’s something we’re still figuring out ourselves.

So, no, we’re not missionaries. But we do love Jesus. We try our best to be salt and light while we’re here, and we hope to leave the people we’ve met and the places we’ve visited in Nigeria just a little bit better than before we came.

P.S.

If you’re wondering how this all started, THIS POST explains it. It’s also when this fun adventure started.

Soon after the war began in late February this year, we received a security notice that American Schools in Nigeria were being targeted for terrorist attacks. The school increased its security, but still, sending our kids to school felt horrible for a while.

Additionally, this year, traffic was worse than ever. This was due to extreme road deterioration in the Fall, followed by construction to repair it in the Spring. I’m happy to report that in mid-April, the roads were finally functional and maybe better than ever. For the first time since living here, we were able to push the school bus departure time from 6:05 AM to 6:40 AM. I’ve cherished the extra sleep.

We’ve lived here almost three years, but in many ways, Nigeria feels exactly the same. Even with a new road and a new airport wing (because they managed to accidently burn the old one down earlier this year).

But one difference I can palpably feel is my own sense of belonging here.

When we first moved, I remember how ugly our company house was. I wanted to simultaneously cry and die upon walking inside every day. The window treatments were vinyl vertical blinds coated in grime and dust. The ceiling held old light fixtures with cheap LED blue tone light bulbs inside.

And, of course, there were the doors.

The inside of the doors had been painted cream. Not cream like sand on a beach where you do yoga, but like the teeth of a person-who-drank-1,000-coffees cream. Or pit-stains-on-a-white-shirt kind of cream. Or a color that was supposed to be white and then 100 cigarette smokers moved in and stained it cream, cream. You get the idea.

Slowly, I changed a lot inside the house.

I was able to get in touch with a local seamstress and design my own curtains and couch cushions. She took ideas from a Pinterest collage and concepts in my head and turned them into reality. They are all gorgeous.

I found a local light fixture store, and while the fixtures aren’t perfect, they’re cute and were cost effective. Unfortunately, the ugly tile will stay untouched, because this is a temporary home and we’re not making any big financial investments.

My final decor project was to paint the inside of the doors. I procrastinated on this because Sherwin Williams paint is shockingly expensive in Nigeria and I hate taping to paint. Nonetheless, I set out to eradicate the cream.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that painting these doors would end up being so much more than just a new color.

It was especially therapeutic (or maybe it was the wine). Regardless, I got to thinking about how there’s something about doors and doorways. I think it’s the possibilities that unfold with each new doorway you may walk through. But they affect our brains in other ways too. Have you ever heard of “the doorway effect”? It’s the concept that we forget things when walking through a doorway from one room to another.

Ironically, when the doorway effect was explained to me years ago, it was explained incorrectly. Up until this writing, my understanding was that walking through a doorway helps you remember things. So, for years I was deliberately finding doorways to walk through to remember where I left my keys and phone, while actually giving myself doorway-induced dementia.

I love our green doors. I knew I would from a visual perspective, but over the past years, it’s more than that. They’ve given me this sense of belonging in a strange place that I wasn’t expecting.

In a small way, the doors now say, “the Rose family is here.”

I remember at the time choosing deep green because I was feeling earthy. But it’s since dawned on me that deep green and white are also the colors of the Nigerian flag, which feels right. Belonging, even in a place you don’t fully understand, is a lovely feeling. And after almost 3 years, it may even be better than the false hope that walking through a doorway is going to help me recall the last place I put my keys.

At the very least, I thought this was their mascot.

Because of this, I was shocked to learn my camp neighbors in Nigeria attend Mormon church every Sunday. And I knew I had to experience this for myself.

I can remember a handful of times growing up interacting with Mormons. The common bond between them all was that they were the kindest people. Truly salt and light kind-of-people. That’s all I remember. Well, that, and the fact that one Mormon guy I lifeguarded with in high school had hammer toes.

Once after grad school, I went on a trip to New York with my sister and we saw “The Book of Mormon,” on Broadway. I don’t remember much of it either, other than it was funny and totally absurd. Fast forward, 20 years or so, and here I was fixing my hair as I got ready to attend Mormon church in Lagos, Nigeria.

As I put make up on, I thought about how my own family doesn’t even attend church here. There’s lots of reasons why: traffic, fear of being hassled, and because some of our camp neighbors who used to attend a Catholic church here told us that service occasionally included “testimony and prayers,” which could last over 3 hours. But my camp neighbor assured me her Mormon church wouldn’t last this long.

Once we arrived, I was surprised to see it was a nice building with a parking lot and all. It looked similar to a church in America. It did not, however, feel similar to a church in America as there was no air conditioning.

Lagos is hot year-round, and this Sunday was a particularly sunny, humid day. They did have ceiling fans and the windows were open, whatever help that was.

The church itself was clean and simple inside. My neighbor’s husband is very involved in the church and was leading the service that day, so he sat up at the front with the other church leaders.

My neighbor is quite popular at church and lots of people came to greet us. Behind us sat a family with a small child, who was likely 3 years old who she introduced to me as Terrance, and then whispered in my ear that he can be, “a bit of a terror.”

Service seemed strangely normal and reminded me of my own Lutheran church back in Texas except for all the sweat, references to The Book of Mormon and Terrance who was certainly attempting to pull my hair from my head one strand at a time. In an attempt to save my hair, I swooped it to the side of my face so it fell in front of my shoulders.

A handful of terminology was foreign to me such as, “our celestial life” and “Pure Religion,” which reminded me of the “Pure Michigan” tourism ads, which feature waterfalls and lakes. There was also mention of Bishops, and a High Counselor, which must be Mormon slang for preachers and pastors.

They also kept talking about a State Championship, which I thought had to do with sports, perhaps wrestling, but my neighbor later told me that they were saying “Stake Conference” (not “championship” even though this is definitely the word I wrote in my notes). Stake Conference, as I’ve since learned, is where all the Mormon churches in the area get together and presumably do something religious.

The thing that surprised me most about service was how slow everything was. I was expecting more of a Sister Act type experience, but no. It was so slow. I’m going to guess this is more a result of being in Nigeria, than being Mormon, but it was as if every song, and every word spoken was slowed down to take double the time it should’ve.

This mirrors our expat lives here. The complete non-rush of everything. The utter disregard for efficiency. Why walk in a straight line to get somewhere, when you can walk in a zig zag? It’s like Teddy getting ready for school, who feels he has all the time in the world and nowhere to be. Where in actuality, all the opposite is true.

However, to my surprise and certainly relief, even with everyone taking their time during speeches and songs, the service itself took just over an hour.

Service was followed by a women’s Sunday school class, which was held in a room that was somehow even warmer than the sanctuary. Because of the heat, the stifled air, and the direct sun that was beating on our backs from the open windows, I’ll be honest and say I didn’t pay too much attention to the lesson. But I know that it was about meekness, and it sorta turned into a group discussion on how to deal with annoying people at your job, which I could appreciate because I once worked with someone who I thought would literally make me explode.

After Sunday school, more ladies came to chat and hug my neighbor. They all kindly said hello to me, but they adored my neighbor.

The thing I left most impressed by was how my neighbors seemed to have found a pocket in which to immerse themselves in Nigerian society. Something that after almost 3 years, I still don’t feel I’ve been fully able to do.

And in a way it all felt in line with what I’ve always known about Mormons.

PS.

In case you’re curious (like I was) according to Wikipedia, as of 2024 there are approximately 250,341 Mormons residing in Nigeria.

The weather never changes much in Lagos, but it’s especially noticeable in Spring. While much of North America is still enjoying cool air and budding gardens, here the air hangs still, heavy with heat, humidity and the smell of rotting trash.

This Spring, the Lagos government decided it was finally time to repair the Lekki Expressway, a highway that’s so slow, street vendors weave in and out of the traffic selling things: strawberries, phone chargers, parrots, socks and art. It’s the Lagos version of Amazon. The plan for the 64-day repair is to close one side of the highway and redirect all cars to the other side. So now the road which barely functioned at full capacity has been cut in half.

Several mornings, the kids’ commute to school has exceeded two hours. You do the math. A two-hour bus ride, plus twenty children ages 3 to 10—some of whom drank apple juice with breakfast, with no safe or company-approved places to pull over…The result isn’t pretty.

There was also the time - granted this was last year - when a child puked on the bus. Planning for anything ahead of time is not a cultural value here and of course, we had no resources for such a bio-disaster. So, the child improvised. He wiped his mouth with the bus window curtain.

The window curtain.

Even the small escapes we attempt within Lagos, still carry the consequences of living in a developing country. I was vividly reminded of this last weekend. CJ and I had gone on a lovely brunch date. We do this every now and then, leave the kids at home with our stewardess and go on a search for some version of normal life.

This particular day we had gone to a local spa where I got my nails done while he got a massage. Then we went to a cute local restaurant. We ordered fresh juices and breakfast. He ate every bite of his eggs and bacon, gently pushed his plate towards the middle of the table and said, “wow, that was really good.” Then, without even a second, thought added, “I’ll probably have diarrhea later.”

This is our life here.

Funny.

But not comedian funny.

Sad-funny.

Frustrated-funny.

You could cry, but laughing is better for you.

There’s not a cocktail in the world strong enough to help.

(Trust me. We’ve checked.)

Because of all this, I’m proud we finally made it to spring break. Made it, as if we finished a marathon. Although the full marathon of our expat lives in Lagos is ongoing. It’s more like we made it to a water station.

I’ll take it.

For runners water stations are a welcome reprieve. A place to rest, rehydrate and breathe.

I’m usually seeking adventure and novelty when I start vacation planning. But we get so many non-optional adventures by simply living here, that this trip I only want to rest. So, we traded luxury for low-key and booked a half beach, half safari trip at a third of the cost of our fancy safari last year.

Sometimes you need simplicity:

• A beach chair to sit with only the sound of the ocean waves in the distance. No honking. No yelling. No phone conversations on speaker at full volume.

• A place to witness the beauty of God’s creation, instead of trash-lined streets, dotted with men urinating openly along them, as you do in Lagos.

• The company of your own people, instead of, say, the time I walked into the bathroom at my gym to find I had accidentally joined someone’s live FaceTime call which they had left live, camera on…while they were busy in the stall.

After almost three years here, it’s strange what starts to feel like enough.

I find myself craving less, not more.

Less traffic. Less interruptions. Less noise.

It’s luxury - redefined.

P.S.

If you need a great Africa beach recommendation - Kinondo Kwetu, the resort we are currently at is AMAZING, decently priced and has proven to be very family friendly. It’s upscale, while still offering good value (you can get a facial or massage for $50 USD) and has an authentic feel in every detail of the stay.

P.P.S.

Other upcoming travels for our family include Croatia, America, Morrocco, and not one, but two short trips to Amsterdam! Can you actually get enough of Amsterdam, though? I always story trips these on Instagram. If you want to join the fun, you can find me @thecaffeinatedginger_

Nyamata Genocide Memorial Tour and A Local Cooking Class

When we signed up to visit the Nyamata Genocide Memorial, I thought we’d visit a place like a museum, buzzing with tourists and shiny plaques. Instead, we were taken to an old church: abandoned, dusty and gated. We were the only people there, besides the tour guide who unlocked the gate to let us inside.

In April of 1994, the Catholic church was housing an estimated 10,000 women and children who were seeking refuge from a political genocide which was unfolding within the country.

Instead, the church was attacked with gut-wrenching violence. Much of the original damage from the attack was left as is, including bloodstains splattered across the ceiling from when grenades exploded.

I asked the tour guide how many survivors there had been. She answered, “at least 7.”

Inside the church, the original benches were covered with the survivors’ clothing. Some of the garments still had the sleeves tied behind their backs, others had large machete holes in them. I respect that Rwandans intentionally left this church this way, but it did not feel clean, pretty or beautifully artistic as many American memorial sites do.

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After walking through the church, where many of us had already began crying, we went outside and sat out on the lawn where we met and listened to two genocide survivors’ stories. One survivor was a victim; one was a perpetrator.

We didn’t know it at the beginning of their stories, but they crossed paths one night and one had tried to kill the other.

The incredible thing was, ultimately, they both chose forgiveness.

The perpetrator chose to ask for forgiveness a decade after the genocide. He found where Alice, the survivor, was living and knocked on her door.

Alice, in total shock of seeing him and his request, fainted.

But when she woke up, she prayed, and in time chose to forgive him.

They now sat side by side telling their stories.

As a physical symbol of their forgiveness, they planted orange trees in each other’s yards. Their family members are welcome to take oranges from each other’s yard.

Witnessing them sit side by side, telling their stories, felt like nothing less than tangible evidence of God.

As they told their stories, at times, it was hard to focus on their voices.

Partly because it was hard to listen through so much sadness (I’m leaving the details of their stories out here). But partly because next to the old brown church was a brightly painted elementary school where the kids had been let out for recess. And in those moments, you could simultaneously hear both the pain of Rwanda’s past and the joy of the present. It was impossible to sort all the emotions out. I still can’t. But I can tell you, there wasn’t a single dry eye in the group.

After the weight the morning’s grief, we ended the day back at The Heaven Hotel taking a cooking class with head chef Janet. She taught us how to make Isombe, a traditional Rwandan dish. Her passion for cooking and the delicious food was a nice counterweight to our morning.

We all went to bed that night emotionally drained, but physically full in preparation for a very early morning of gorilla trekking.

Day 6:

Gorilla Trekking in Volcanoes National Park

In an attempt to save money, and perhaps because we had spent so much of it at the One and Only Nyungwe House, (a decision I have zero regrets on) we decided to go gorilla trekking from Kigali. This meant our day began at 3:30 AM and by 4:00 we were on the road with coffee and snacks in hand.

At 7 we arrived at Volcanoes National Park, where we had to attend a safety meeting.

Now, I’m going to back up for a second here and share that before we had left on this trip, we had to sign waivers that we would accept a blood transfusion if needed. Something I’ve never, ever, ever imagined needing to do for a vacation.

And I was beginning to really doubt my travel choices at this point.

But in the midst that doubt, Volcanoes National Park provided me all the reassurance I could possibly need - a coffee shop.

This may be risky, but we had priorities straight:

Coffee first, then death.

After multiple days of tough hikes, including one where we basically sprinted uphill for a mile thanks to Kathy, my friend Ayssa opted to hire a team of porters to carry her in a stretcher through the gorilla trekking.

After the safety briefing, our guide told us we would be visiting the gorilla family called Muhoza. I asked if we’d get to see any babies (this was what I was hoping for most), and he answered, “so many babies!”

In addition to the 8 porters carrying Alyssa, our guide recommended at least 3 more porters to help us, and this time we gladly accepted the recommendation.

Then we were off, first into the farmlands which led to the mountain base, and then traversing muddy puddles all leading us to where the Muhoza family was grazing. The air was thick with humidity and the smell of eucalyptus trees. I felt sweat dripping down my face but dare not wipe it off as I was gripping my hiking pole far too tightly.

I thought we were keeping a good pace, but couldn’t help but notice that my friend Alyssa, carried high above the mud in her stretcher, was so far ahead of us that we couldn’t even see her. The porters were so strong, they were basically jogging while her.

I was beginning to feel a little discouraged, when our guide told us we needed to put masks on because we’d found the Muhoza family.

We pushed through a final wall of brush and there he was, Marambo, head of the family. Five hundred pounds of muscle, back turned, methodically eating.

He heard us.

Paused.

Turned. Looked directly at us.

Then went back to his leaves, unimpressed.

Then we heard more leaves rustling to our left. Inside those leaves was a mother and baby.

Then more leaves were rustling to our right this time. The gorillas seemed to be all around, which was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying.

My favorite gorilla was a 1-year-old who was busy playing in the bamboo, doing flips, picking on his brother and annoying his mom. It was as if he was showing off just for us.

Similar to the chimps, we were allowed to spend an hour with the gorillas before we had to trek back out. But it was harder to leave the gorillas. Somehow they seemed more magical.

Back at the hotel, they offered to clean our boots for $10 a pair. I swear when they returned mine, they looked even better than when I bought them. We ended the evening drinking chilled white wine from South Africa, eating snacks and showing each other our gorilla pictures.

The next day we said goodbye to Rwanda.

We’d come for the gorillas. But I left thinking about the orange trees planted in former enemies’ yards. Children laughing beside a church that still bears its scars. Ziplining through the rainforest in pouring rain. Receiving warm ginger tea after a long day of travel. And laughing until my abs ached at the idea that another glass of wine was somehow going to save the children.

Rwanda doesn’t pretend its past didn’t happen. It keeps building anyway. And somehow, you don’t leave feeling crushed. You leave with hope for even the worst of humanity, and a longing to return.

P.S.

This post is the last part of a 3-part series. Part 1 of this series is here. And Part 2 is here.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from chimp trekking, but that morning, my husband sent me an Instagram post titled, “7 Horrifying Facts About Chimpanzees.”

It was not encouraging.

Unfortunately, the money was non-refundable. So, on we went.

Our tour guide drove us from our hotel to the Cyamudongo Forest. The bumpy dirt roads were headache-inducing. Outside the window local people hauled everything imaginable up those hills: dead chickens, doors, sweet potatoes, and baskets of tea leaves, all balanced on their heads or creatively strapped to bicycles.

Upon arriving at the Cyamudongo Forest, we met our chimp trekking guide, Francios. He was bubbling with enthusiasm and a palpable passion for his job. He also liked to refer to himself in third person which made him even more endearing.

I asked Francios if the chimpanzees were going to rip our arms off, but he assured me otherwise.

“The chimps know you’re a tourist. They’re happy to see you. They’ll be smiling just like Francios!”

We also hired three local porters to carry our things. At first, I was thinking, “Oh, we don’t need that. I can carry my own backpack. I do Pilates.”

But then Francois casually mentioned the porters would also help keep us from slipping in the mud and assist if we “couldn’t get out.”

Couldn’t get out?

That gave me major Jumanji vibes, and suddenly we were like, “Yes. Three. We’ll take three.”

Despite our trio of heroic porters, at least one member of our group still managed to wipe out on the muddy trek. She’ll remain nameless.

Thankfully, no one had to be dramatically extracted from a mud pit. But it was still comforting to know that if the jungle decided to swallow us whole, we had backup.

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Francios used the first hour of the trek to teach us how to communicate with the chimpanzees and most importantly how to show respect in case we accidentally “aggress them.”

Basically, you make a sound similar to clearing your throat to say a friendly hello. And you bow your head and fold your arms to show respect. I had rehearsed both of these in my head many times.

When we finally found the chimpanzees we all began attempting to speak chimp, “et hmm, et hmm, et hmm….”

One of them was sitting right in the middle of our hiking trail and Francios told one of us to go get a picture in front of it. But no one wanted to volunteer and somehow, I got voted to go. I was smiling for pictures, not looking toward the chimp, when Francios told me to slowly come back to the group.

The chimp was headed in our direction.

I was sure this would be the moment everything turned.

I could see the headline, “Tourist Loses Arm on Epic Chimpanzee Trekking Trip.”

Instead, the chimp turned and went downhill away from us.

Overall, they didn’t seem to care about us at all. At best they’d give us a glance and then go about whatever they were doing.

My favorite part was watching the chimps move from tree to tree high in the branches. They’re strong enough to pull an entire tree towards themselves as if it was made of rubber and then just swing from one tree branch to the next.

We were allowed an hour with the group of habituated chimps and then had to hike on. While the chimps were amazing, I wasn’t sad about this, because despite bringing lots of snacks, I was getting pretty hungry and we still had a solid journey back to the hotel.

Ziplining and Canopy Tour - Day 4

Apparently, I didn’t read the trip itinerary closely, because the zip lining and canopy tour was a total surprise. But this experience was amazing and I would absolutely recommend it.

And guess who we ran into at Nyungwe National Park as we were getting ready to zipline? Francios! Somehow, he was even happier today than he had been the day before. This made me wonder what kind of endorphins the being in the jungle must release.

The zipline course looked terrifying. We were so high and below was a plunging valley of trees. But I told myself and the rest of the group that we didn’t come all the way to Rwanda to not zip line.

Before we began the ziplines, our tour guides encouraged us to all have our rain jackets as we were in Rwanda’s “short rainy season” and it could rain at anytime. None of us did. We’d been too preoccupied with a mix of excitement and anxiety when we got out of the car. We figured we’d be fine.

We were not fine.

As we were completing the first of three ziplines, dark clouds began rolling in.

By the time we reached the platform for the second zip line we just accepted our fate of zip lining in pouring rain. But to my surprise, the rain only elevated the whole experience.

Rain falling on my face. Wind swirling in my ears. Forest stretching endlessly below.

The final zipline ended minutes from the Nyungwe Forest canopy bridge, so continuing on felt right. The suspension bridges didn’t deliver the same adrenaline rush, but the views were worth it. You can see all the layers of rainforest stretch in every direction.

After crossing the bridges, we faced a short but aggressive uphill hike back to the park entrance. My friend Kathy decided we should just “get it over with,” and basically jog up the path.

Her strategy sounded smart.

It felt terrible.

We did, however, all make it to the top - doubled over, gasping for air, and cursing Kathy under our breath.

By midday, we were muddy, soaked, exhilarated, and exhausted.

Then we settled in for our 5.5-hour drive back to Kigali, where we checked into Heaven Hotel for the next three days of our trip. We ended this long day grateful for hot showers, dry clothes and the thrill of adventure.

Rwanda is known as “the land of 1,000 hills,” and after trekking through more than a few of them, I can confirm this is not an exaggeration. Our gorilla and chimpanzee trekking trip was filled with awe, joy, some sorrow, and more natural beauty than I was prepared for.

I loved it all so much, that after writing the review, I couldn’t fit into one post, so you’re getting a 3-part series.

Our group was seven people: mostly my expat camp neighbors here in Lagos, plus one very adventurous friend who flew from America to Nigeria first…and then onto Rwanda with us.

I still think she’s crazy for this.

Cost

For transparency, the trip cost about $7,300 per person. That included the $1,500 gorilla trekking permit, hotels, transfers, and most meals. It did not include flights or tips.

Yes, gorilla trekking is expensive. It’s also a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Unless you go twice.

You get the point. We also chose two nights of luxury lodging that could be downgraded to reduce cost.

We used Jack at Cambium Safaris to plan the trip, and he did a phenomenal job. In addition to being an Africa based travel agent, Jack and his wife own and run and safari camp in Botswana, so they know the business from many vantage points.

Itinerary:

Day 1 – Arrive in Kigali. Stay at Radisson Blu.
Day 2 – Travel to Nyungwe Forest. Stay at Nyungwe House.
Day 3 – Chimpanzee trekking
Day 4 – Zipline & canopy tour. Return to Kigali and stay at Heaven Hotel.
Day 5 – Nyamata Genocide Memorial + Rwandan cooking class
Day 6 – Gorilla trekking in Volcanoes National Park

In this post, I’m sharing Days 1 and 2 and how the entire trip somehow became “for the children.”

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Day 1 - Arrive in Kigali

Our flight from Lagos landed at 8:35 PM. The first thing I noticed was the cool air and breeze outside. It felt incredible.

We were met by Hemingway Tours, who escorted us through immigration and into an airport lounge where we drank Coke and sparkling water while they retrieved our luggage. It was the smoothest airport experience I’ve ever had.

We stayed at the Radisson Blu for the night, a short drive from the airport. Check-in was slow and we were a little cranky about that, but the rooms and beds were decent.

Day 2 - Travel to Nyungwe Forest

We rode 5.5 hours from Kigali to Nyungwe Forest in southwest Rwanda. The drive was stunning, but next time I’d fly to save time.

When we finally arrived at Nyungwe House, we were greeted by local dancers and drummers performing just for us.

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The rainforest was noticeably cooler than Kigali and I had to put on a jacket before getting out of the car. Then, while the dancers were still singing and jumping, as if on cue, thunder rolled in and a light, cool rain began to fall.

Inside the lobby, staff handed us hot ginger tea while checking us in. Two masseuses were waiting to give shoulder massages in chairs overlooking the misty hills.

After being thoroughly spoiled by our welcome, we headed to our rooms.

For The Children

I had every intention of going to the gym, but before I could change, a friend opened a bottle of wine and poured glasses for us on the patio.

On second thought, I could go work out after one glass of wine.

Many glasses of wine and zero push-ups later, I noticed a note on the living room table. It was sitting where the wine bottles had been, next to two reusable water bottles.

I read the note out loud:

“If you choose to leave your bottles, we will donate them to local schools as part of a sustainability program and provide students with a safe way to store clean drinking water.”

Filled with altruistic pride, I announced:

“Y’all, we need to drink more wine. It’s for the children!”

Two of my friends had already figured it out and were laughing too hard to speak.

The note was referring to the reusable water bottles. Not to our empty wine bottles.

For the rest of the trip, we raised our glasses at dinner and toasted,

“For the children!”

The Nigerian part I’m getting good at.

Well, I thought I was, but just this week, my dinner order was wrong despite clear instructions on WhatsApp. And then, the dance instructor we hired for a party on Saturday evening showed up to camp at 5:45 AM, thinking the party was at 6:30 AM, not PM. I suppose miscommunication, traffic, and regular Nigerian shenanigans are as good as Lagos gets.

The international travel part I’m actually getting good at. For real.

I now know how to check what type of plug adapters we need before we arrive (a totally amazing accomplishment), make sure our passports are up to date and have enough blank pages, and check visa requirements before committing to a destination.

As I reflect on 2025, travel was a major highlight, and that shows up in the lessons I learned living abroad this year.

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Lesson 1:

Take the trip. OK timing is better than perfect timing.

This applies to so many areas of life, but especially to travel. It’s tempting to wait for ideal conditions: for kids to be “the right” age, to go during peak season, to save more money or PTO. The problem with this mindset is you don’t know if you’ll ever get the chance when everything aligns. And often that perfect alignment will never happen.

A better approach is: if you have the opportunity, or can reasonably create one, take the trip. You’ll discover that shoulder season is cheaper and lovely, and that kids have meaningful travel experiences at all ages.

Expat life has given us an abundance of opportunities to travel, and it still feels surreal. I know the amount we travel isn’t normal. But when you do see an opportunity to travel in your own life, my encouragement is to take it.

Travel has a way of weaving itself into the fabric of who you are and how you experience the world in the most amazing way.

Lesson 2:

If you can’t find it, learn how to make it.

Last year, I talked about how easy it is to hate Starbucks, until you live in a country without Starbucks (post is linked). This year, with the help of several coffee-snob neighbors, we have officially become Starbucks.

Actually, our coffee is better than Starbucks.

We upped our game and bought a small but high-quality Italian espresso machine and grinder. If you want good coffee, don’t go to Starbucks. Come to Camp Lekki.

Lesson 3: Build small rituals that help you pause and notice where you are.

One of my favorite family traditions we’ve started during our travels is once we’ve arrived where we’re going, we do “a toast” using the local word for cheers. It’s a simple, beautiful pause. A moment to acknowledge where this expat adventure has taken us and to learn a word from the local language.

I usually ask a local what the word for “cheers” is rather than googling it, which helps with correct pronunciation and often sparks small chat.

I love this shared moment of gratitude we make space for.

Lesson 4: Travel smarter, not harder.

We implemented a lot of travel hacks this year, but a few stand out:

• Longer layovers + Yotelair
Booking a longer layover instead of the shortest one can save hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars. Four hours in a family size Yotelair typically costs around 130 euros and gives you beds for 4 and a full bathroom. It’s a great way to save money and break up long international travel. This blog shares more about how Yotelair works and where you can find them.

• Hiring a babysitter on vacation
This sounds crazy, but many European cities have reputable babysitting agencies. We tried this in Prague over Christmas, and my only regret is not doing it sooner.

• Use Daytrip for easy city-to-city travel
CJ is a ninja at figuring out public transit within a city, but traveling between cities with luggage and small humans can be stressful. Daytrip picks you up at your hotel and drives you directly to your destination (with any needed car seats included!) We used them from Vienna to Prague and had a great experience. They operate in over 120 countries, so maybe worth looking into for a future trip.

As we look ahead to 2026, I’m hopeful for more great travel experiences. So far, we’ve got Kenya, Croatia, Morocco, and Austria to look forward to.

But one of the things I’m most excited about, surprisingly, is not leaving Lagos, it’s introducing it to a friend. One of my friends arrives from Houston today. We’ll spend the week here, then head to Rwanda for gorilla trekking next week!

Being able to show someone the chaos and joy of our everyday life here feels entirely validating. It’s being understood in a way that, despite being a writer, and this entire blog, I still can’t fully explain

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P.S.

Follow my Instagram stories next week if you want to see our travels to Rwanda and gorilla trekking. Also, say a prayer for our safety!

Gorilla trekking legit hiking through the jungle, where a guide with a machete cuts down brush as you walk. It can last anywhere from 30 minutes - 8 hours, because who knows where the gorillas are! This obviously needs to be a future post, right?

Camp News:

• We had our first camp-wide block party of the year this past weekend. And despite receiving prior complaints about every party having pizza and shawarma, we, the social committee, kindly provided pizza and shawarma….It’s so good, though!

• A friend and I were also able to convince the committee to hire our Afrobeat dance instructor to come teach camp some Afrobeat dance at the block party! It was so much fun. And sweat. There was a lot of sweat. You may remember Praise, my Afrobeat dance teacher, from this post.

• A few families moved back to America over Christmas break, but a new couple arrives today! Camp life is ever changing, which is both fun…and hard sometimes.

Before I explain, I need you to know this:

1. We live on a very guarded compound which includes a lot of barbed wire, CC TV everywhere and multiple barricades.

2. Unlike most expat camps in Lagos, ours is far from the “nice” area. By nice I mean the roads are cement rather than dirt. Nice does not mean clean. It also doesn’t mean you won’t witness a fist fight or perhaps someone relieving themselves on the side of the road.

3. I recently shifted from my role as children’s coordinator to being on the social committee (the is the volunteer group that puts on camp-wide events.) My friend who was on the social committee moved back to America; thus they had a vacancy. That’s how you get recruited here, by desperation, not qualifications.

Historically our camp events are fine.

Of course, there’s occasional hiccups, but there’s never been an event cursed like our 2025 Thanksgiving celebration. Below is a brief overview of how one piece of bad news was outdone by the next, and how, against all odds, we were still able to have turkey and mashed potatoes for dinner.

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9 AM

• The vendor who’s been hand sewing presents for each family on camp for the past month comes to deliver them. We’re standing on my porch and I’m admiring her work when she freezes in horror. She’s left one of her big bags, packed with the 20 of the gifts in the cab she took to get here. She bolts from my house in a panic. I’m left with 25 gifts for 45 families.

  A minute later she sends me a voice memo saying she’s going to try to find them….in a cab somewhere in Lagos, Nigeria. I wish her luck, but I know there’s a better chance of finding the Holy Grail, than her finding that bag amongst the 18 million(ish) people in Lagos.

  10 AM

• I get a call from our camp facilities manager. The AC in our big gym, the only space large enough to host the 80+ people we’re expecting, has died. Not to worry, he’s already called our camp repair team.

  This same repair team left a water hose on inside my attic last year while doing “preventative maintenance.” It resulted in our kitchen (located below the attic) catastrophically flooding. This is just one example of things they’ve managed to do, er, “fix,” on camp.

11 AM - 2 PM

• Downtime, where I think that the issues above are all that’s going to go wrong.

  3 PM

• My friend on the social committee who organized the music gets a call from the musician. Her car has broken down, and she’s stuck on the third mainland bridge. This is nowhere near us.

  4 PM

• I get a call from our caterer. Food is the line item we’ve spent the most on, almost triple what we’ve spent for anything else. We’ve partnered with the American Guest Quarters in Lagos, and all the food has been shipped in from America.

  The catering manager tells me they have two buses coming to our estate, but one of the buses “is having mechanical issues.” She doesn’t go into details. She doesn’t need to. I can hear the panic in her voice. I realize there’s a chance that we won’t have food.

  How do you have a Thanksgiving without food?

  4:13 PM

• Update on gym AC. “Good news is the power keeps tripping to the unit, so they know it’s not working. Bad news is they don’t know why.”

  I’m searching for the good news in the message. I’m confused why it begins with these words.

  5:11 PM

• Another update. Still no AC, but the repair crew will begin to bring standing fans into the gym.

  Awesome.

  6:00 PM

• Thanksgiving celebration officially starts in 30 minutes. We’ve heard back from no one: not the lady rummaging through every cab in Lagos, not the singer, not the food vendor.

  I’m losing all hope.

  I’m also drinking a margarita at a neighbor’s house. They’re feeding me pity alcohol and I’m accepting.

  6:11 PM

• The food vendor calls. I brace myself for the worse, but instead she says, “we’re here!” It’s the first good news we’ve heard all day. A few minutes later, we get confirmation that the singer has also arrived.

  6:20 PM

• I head to the gym. It’s very hot. While North America is getting cold fronts and snowstorms, Lagos is entering its hottest season (December - March). Despite the heat, both the catering team and the musicians are setting up.

  For the first time in a while, I feel this celebration might happen.

The catering manager sees me and comes over to apologize. They had two buses: one with personnel, one packed entirely with food. The food bus broke down in transit. They didn’t know how they were going to make it…until someone had an idea.

A seatbelt.

They cut a seatbelt out of the working bus, tied it to the broken bus, and slowly, very slowly, towed our entire Thanksgiving dinner all the way to our estate.

I have so many questions, but I ask none of them. I’m too grateful and honestly amazed.

Only Nigerians are this resourceful. And only on the Lekki Expressway is it completely normal to have a bus towing another bus with a seatbelt.

This is how the madness of Lagos, which typically makes me want to scream-cry into my pillow, saved our Thanksgiving. In the end, we all were able to eat turkey while music played in the background and sweat dripped from our faces directly into our mashed potatoes.

Happy Thanksgiving y’all.

PS.

Similar to the Holy Grail, the 20 handmade gifts were never found.

PPS.

I can’t get over the GQ’s commitment to our Thanksgiving celebration. Should you ever find yourself in Lagos, it’s the best place to go for a hamburger. But they also have tennis, swimming and a spa!

Camp News:

• I said it last newsletter and I’ll say it again: send me a Christmas card! Our snail mail address is based in California and magically it makes it to us here in Nigeria (usually around mid-February). These are my favorite to receive. Send it to: House 79/Rose, PO Box 6050 C/O NIG-1 LAGOS POUCH, San Ramon, CA, 94583

• My family travels out for Christmas holidays in 10 days! We’re heading to Vienna, Munich and Prague. If you have recommendations, please leave them in the comments. We are SO excited.

  

• Several families are leaving at Christmas. I hate saying bye to our expat family, but they have new adventures ahead! We will miss everyone leaving soon!

Have you ever accomplished something a previous version of yourself wouldn’t have dreamed of?

Maybe you got that promotion, or on the other end of that spectrum, proudly walked away from a job that was no longer a fit. Maybe it was a physical accomplishment like running a marathon or even a 5k. Whatever the thing, at some point you looked back and saw how far you’d come?

Recently, I realized I’m braver than I was before we went on this expat adventure. I’ve hated almost every trial we’ve faced (and continue to face) in Nigeria. But I’m realizing I have these trials to thank for the person I’m becoming.

Even the awful traffic.

Courage wasn’t something I asked for or even wanted. Rather it was a transformation out of necessity. A product required for survival.

Best-selling author, You Tuber and psychologist, Jordan Peterson defines becoming braver in two ways in this video. First, he says, becoming braver is not the same as being naive (not knowing what you’re getting into). And second, being braver is not the same as being less afraid. Becoming braver, rather, is understanding the stressors and fears you may face and yet willingly moving towards them.

According to an article by Psychology Today, Five ways to cultivate bravery are:

1. Embracing uncertainty

2. Release expectations

3. Lean into discomfort

4. Learn to stay (even if its uncomfortable)

5. Keep moving forward.

I supposed living in Nigeria has forced me to do all 5 of these many times over. Often times accompanied by tears and cuss words.

Not long after my stitches incident, the boys and I left the country for our own Fall break. CJ couldn’t join us because of his work schedule. I entertained staying on home even though the boys didn’t have school for the week and there’s few options for entertainment here. This would’ve been the easier and certainly more cost-effective thing to do, but instead, I booked us a week at Eftling. Known as the “Dutch Disneyland,” Eftling, has been on my places-to-visit list for a while.

Before we left, anxiety set up a campsite in my head. As Jordan Peterson discusses, I was well aware of the fears and stressors of this trip. Flying out of the Lagos airport is concerning even when I’m not solo-parenting. And once we landed in Amsterdam, we’d still be 2-hours away from Eftling. Getting there would require taking a local train, followed by a bus and then a short walk. And to be honest, I struggle with knowing my right from my left.

This trip, I’d be forced to figure all this out. And I wasn’t sure I could do it.

So, you can imagine my shock and joy when after a red-eye flight, I not only managed to identify out my right from left, but was able to get myself, two children (4 and 8) and three bags to Eftling without issue.

OK. There were some issues.

The Amsterdam airport Starbucks was out of Pumpkin Spice syrup (why?!), and my kids attempted to murder each other a few times during the journey. But there were no big issues.

Also. Don’t judge me on the bags. We could’ve done the trip with two. But when you’re heading to a land where high-quality cheese and chocolate are in abundance and coming from a land where such things don’t exist, you need extra luggage space. It’s basic travel math.

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Here’s the cool thing about having more bags than I could physically carry - it opened a small window to see how kind humanity can be. Random people offered to help me with my bags from Lagos to Eftling.

Eftling was amazing and I 10/10 recommend it. It’s known for its dark rides - which are the fun inside rides that take you through a journey of sorts. I tried (unsuccessfully) to understand the fantastical Dutch storylines that went with many of the rides. But here’s something else I’ve learned from 2.5 years of living abroad: you don’t have to understand something to love it.

In general, Eftling offered a week of welcome entertainment and joy for the boys. But for me personally, Eftling unveiled a quiet truth: I’m not who I was when we moved here. I’m a braver version of who I was. One who can navigate foreign trains and buses, shepherd two small humans across continents, and on occasion, even tell her left from her right.

PS. Dutch cheese is the best.

And while it doesn’t seem like my favorite Dutch cheese company ships to the US (sorry guys), my favorite Dutch chocolate bar company does!

You can click here to order Tony’s Chocoloney! I’ve also seen it at Wholefoods on occasion. You can even order custom bars and custom wrappers (how cool is that?!). Note: the custom bars and wrappers have a 3-week lead time but would make a really cool gift for friends or a work team!

Camp News:

1. Please send me a Christmas card! Our snail mail address is based in California and magically it makes it to us here in Nigeria (usually around mid-February). These are my FAVORTIE to receive. Send it to: House 79/Rose, PO Box 6050 C/O NIG-1 LAGOS POUCH, San Ramon, CA, 94583

2. Camp is SO busy this time of year. Since the last newsletter, we’ve celebrated Lekki camp Halloween, had a badminton mixer (CJ won along with another campmate), and had a camp Bazaar! If you’re wondering why this Newsletter is a few weeks tardy, I blame all the camp activities mentioned above!

3. Traffic is worse than ever, ever, ever. This school year the kids’ bus roll-out time is 6:10 AM to get to school that starts at 7:30 AM. Last year, we had the divine luxury of leaving camp at 6:25 AM. And I thought that was early! To make matters worse we just got notice from the Lagos government that they will be starting construction this week. When does the construction end? Per the goverment notice July of 2026.

   I only tell you all this to gather as much pity as feasibly possible. Us non-morning people are not OK. Send strong coffee and prayers like those of Moses when he parted the Red sea. Prayers on this level are the only hope for the Lekki Expressway.

4. If you’re still reading, you must be a true fan, which is why I saved the best for last. Recently, I was interviewed for the Expat Diaries Substack. If you want to watch our interview which talks about how I ended up in Nigeria, you can see it here. And if you enjoy hearing expat stories, please give Vivian a follow. I really love her tag line, “Leaving home. Finding home.”

Literally. In the form of a cement wall.

I got up from falling off my 8-year-old’s non-motorized scooter fully aware my pride was damaged, but thankfully, I was fine.

Except, something was off…what was it?

Oh…large amounts of blood flowing from my head, that’s what it was.

We had arrived home after a lovely cruise through Spain and Italy late Monday night. After all the travel, I allowed the boys to miss school on Tuesday and was committed to taking it easy myself.

I was preparing pizza dough for dinner when I realized we were out of olive oil. I figured I’d grab it from our camp store which is only a few streets away. My 4-year-old wanted to tag along on his scooter, and in a moment of questionable judgment, I grabbed my 8-year-old’s scooter for myself.

The store had several options for olive oil, but I went for the cold pressed one that came in a glass bottle because this kind is healthiest for you (so I’ve heard). I grabbed a few other items, and we were on our way back home.

It had been raining earlier that day and the streets were wet but my scooter skills were on point. I even mimicked some of my 4 year-olds single leg tricks as we headed back home because I wanted him to know his mom is pretty cool.

We were almost home and working our way through a small sidewalk alleyway, when the scooter I was riding completely betrayed me.

One moment I was fine.

And then I wasn’t.

And somewhere in the middle of those two moments was a cement wall.

I knew I had fallen and hit my head, but when I stood up, I was most concerned about the olive oil. It was leaking through the grocery bag. I reached my hand inside to see if I could savage any of it, only to realize the bottle had completely shattered. Glass shards everywhere.

I wanted to cry thinking about the pizza dough.

“The irony of this whole trip,” I thought, as I lifted my hand to wipe some sweat off my forehead.

This is when I realized there was blood on my hand.

But where did it come from?

Did I cut my hand on the glass from the olive oil bottle? Or was it the gentle run-in with the cement wall?

I lifted my forearm up and wiped it on my head to check. With that, I had my answer: the blood was definitely coming from my head. And it was a lot of blood.

Meanwhile, Teddy was meandering around with a demeanor that fell somewhere between annoyed that we had stopped and concerned that I had fallen. Seeing all the blood, I quickly tried to figure out what to do next.

Now, I realize it’s not overly considerate to knock on someone’s door when your head is busted. But in a growing panic, I left my bag of olive-oil-infused groceries on the sidewalk and did just that.

My sweet neighbor Vicky opened the door and insisted I come in. She acted as if we’d had plans to do afternoon tea, despite the fact that I looked like I had walked off the set of a horror movie. I explained there had been a small scooter situation and apologized over and over.

She handed me paper towels and an ice pack. “Brittany, I think you need stitches,” she said concerned.

I assured her I was fine. But Vicky, who could actually see the wound, knew better. She sent Teddy home (where our stewardess was) and insisted on taking me to the clinic.

One thing my husband’s company provides the expats here is access to a company medical clinic and doctor. Like many places here, the clinic, if in America, is a place that I would literally run out of and never return to. Some of the lights are flickering, the floor is uneven, and wires hang out of random places in the ceiling. But for Nigeria, the clinic is considered nice. There are two doctors from South Africa who each work a month at a time and rotate out. I’ve always been grateful for this in theory, but this day, I was grateful in reality.

Vicky had messaged our camp doctor about my fall when we were still at her house, and by the time we arrived at the clinic they were ready for me. They wouldn’t even allow me to walk in the regular entrance and insisted we go straight to the emergency entrance.

Within seconds of being in the emergency room, I realized I would be fine because our camp doctor is absolutely amazing. She calmly told the rest of the staff what to do, how to keep everything sterile and what to bring her as she poured cold water over my head to clean the wound. Vicky sat in the corner in a form of kind solidarity with me. I noticed she had shoved a whole roll of paper towels into her purse.

I was positive that I’d be told it was all fine, but the doctor disagreed.

“No, Brittany, you need some sutures,” she announced in her strong South African accent.

Getting two shots of lidocaine felt like glass slicing into my head and was far more painful than my gentle collision with the cement wall.

Fifteen minutes later, the doctor poked my injury lightly with the needle to see if I could feel it. I could. I felt it vividly.

Red heads are known for needing more anesthesia than the normal population (you can read an article about it HERE). It was at this point, for the first time in the whole situation I began to feel anxiety about the stitches.

The doctor gave me two more shots of lidocaine.

We waited again.

She tested my injury again. I still felt it.

Then, I had a great idea - we could just use a butterfly band aid instead of stitches. I pitched it to the doctor.

“Do you mean a steri-strip, Brittany?”

“Yes! You know, one of those magic band aids that’ll hold my skin together? I think it’ll work well.”

“No, I’m sorry. Your cut is much too deep for a steri-strip.”

And with this comment, I remembered I’m an Occupational Therapist and actually knew nothing about whatever I was advocating for.

“Ok. Then let’s just do it....I can do it.” I said, mentally coaching myself that I’d be fine.

“Let’s wait a little longer,” the doctor insisted.

We waited.

She tested again. I could still feel her tweezers, but I told her to try a stitch. She did. I could feel everything, even the needle moving through my skin, but thankfully, the pain was dull. I got through the first stitch and then the second.

“I think that will do!” she said.

And then the doctor, who had kept a completely calm composure the whole time, began laughing.

“I just…I don’t know how to do your bandage.” She said, still laughing. “I’m just…I’m going to do my best.”

She then proceeded to wrap my head like a mummy and told me I needed to wear the bandage for the next 48 hours. I also couldn’t wash my blood-soaked hair for 72 hours.

Of course I had a full day at work the next day. This is how life works, friends.

Before we left, I made Vicky take a few pictures for you all, and we headed back home.

I posted about the whole thing on my Instagram stories and many of you sent kind well wishes, so thank you. One of my friends who is an ER doctor said, “as we say in the ER, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” This is also a lyric in a Taylor Swift song, so it was fitting that I was wearing my TS shirt when this whole thing happened.

As I got my stitches out yesterday, I was thinking about how this whole situation felt like a small lesson in humility, humor and pain.

But the biggest lesson I learned is this: a good neighbor isn’t just there for the coffee and small talk. A good neighbor is there for the blood and stitches, with paper towels in hand.

Mr. Rogers’ famously sang, “won’t you be my neighbor?” But the truth is, most of the time, we don’t get to choose who we live next to. Neighbors are usually a product of circumstances: job location, what’s for sale and budget.

But maybe there’s a divine aspect in there too. And maybe when Jesus said, “love your neighbor as yourself,” he wasn’t just talking to us, but he was also saying this for us.

Sometimes we get to be the ones to offer help, and sometimes we’re the ones who need it. This is how the world of human kindness goes round.

P.S.

Some of you may remember Vicky from THIS post where she joined me in an adventure eating Nigerian food. She was a trooper that time, too. But there was less blood, and WAY more bones.

Fast forward to last week, when I was preparing for a Substack interview with another creator and she said it. The dreaded label. I couldn’t help but launch into my explanation of why I hate that term. As someone who has also moved abroad, she gets it. But does everyone else?

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To be clear, there was nothing trailing about my decision to come to Nigeria. I have a master’s degree and spent 12-years building a career that I was passionate about. I walked away from a six-figure salary because my husband and I made a deliberate, strategic choice. We did the math, debated trade-offs, and weighed every pro and con - both tangible and intangible

.

This wasn’t me trailing, this was us moving forward, together.

The moment our family began packing our bags and entire house for a new life in Lagos, I accepted an agency and ownership in my husband’s job that I’d never felt before. I may not be the one walking into the office every day, but I’m the one making it possible for our family to live here, so that he can walk into that office every day.

Our family living in Nigeria is in every way a team effort.

Here are a few examples of what I do to support our family here:

• Keep our house in working order. The house we live in is 40 years old, and like most things in this country, has minimal maintenance done, preventative or otherwise. The result is things break often. The air condition is a common one, but leaks, water supply issues and general appliances breaking are often challenges I deal with.

• Grocery shopping. Grocery shopping in Nigeria requires trips to multiple different stores, depending on the item, and hours of sitting in traffic each week. The supply chain is unpredictable at best. Just because I found my 4-year-old’s favorite yogurt in the grocery store today doesn’t mean it’ll be there tomorrow. The grocery situation here has taught me two things: 1) how to hoard and 2) how to pivot.

• Cooking. Cooking meals is far more time consuming here than it was in America. For example, I’ve never been able to stomach the local ground beef. I’m not exactly sure what’s inside it, or what the government requirements are (or aren’t), but it tastes gamey. So, if I want to use ground beef, a common ingredient in kid-friendly meals, I purchase imported meat from South Africa and then grind it myself. There are also limited pre-made items here, so if I want pizza dough or biscuits, I make those from scratch just like Martha Stewert, minus the insider trading, and also, the talent.

• Plan and manage travel. I realize this may come off as a privileged problem, but I don’t take our ability to travel for granted, rather, I’m incredibly grateful for it. Travel and getting breaks are a big part of our ability to stay in Lagos over the long haul. My husband’s company recognizes the need for breaks by offering extra leave time and partial funds for our travel. Coordinating those trips, navigating flights, visas, and hotels can be fun, but it’s also very time consuming and tedious.

• Work. I know this is confusing, because I’ve established that I’m not the “working spouse,” but I do still work. Remember the career I mentioned earlier? It turns out that the international school that my kids attend needed someone with my exact background, so last year, I accepted a part time job. It’s been nice to be a resource for the school, and I’ve welcomed the ability to keep my profession going, at least in a small way.

• Be a “bus mom.” Every parent in our compound takes turns helping chaperone the kids’ daily commute to school by riding the bus to school with the kids. We are typically assigned a “bus mom (or bus dad) role,” a few days per week, although it varies each month. This is not your average school drop-off. An average “bus mom,” shift is probably 1.5-2.5 hours total. But it can take longer. Just last week, our elementary school bus took 10 hours to get home because a major road flooded. Twenty kids, ages 3–10, left school at 2:30 PM and arrived back at camp at 12:30 AM. Thankfully this is the only time something this extreme has happened, but these are the realities of living here. Don’t worry, after a few hours the bus was able to divert to a hotel for some of that time, so the kids did get dinner and potty breaks, and they now think this was the coolest experience.

• Do something fun. I know this list is about how I support my family, but let’s be honest, supporting my own sanity helps everyone. And I want to be transparent: it’s not all work. I try to take a weekly Pilates class, grab lunch with friends, or when I’m really living on the edge, I’ll book a facial at 10 AM on a weekday. These are things I never would’ve imagined doing back when I was working 40–50 hours a week in America, so I don’t take them for granted. My husband’s company also helps keep camp life lively with holiday parties and events like “back to school” celebrations. I’m even on a few party planning committees (like in the show The Office, but without the pettiness). When I get to do these little fun things, I’m grateful. They’re lovely reminders to pause and recharge, even if they don’t represent the bulk of my day-to-day life.

Where did the “trailing” term come from?

The term “trailing spouse” first appeared in a 1981 Wall Street Journal article by Mary Bralove titled, “Problems of Two-Career Families Start Forcing Businesses to Adapt.” I couldn’t find the original piece to read, but I’ll give Mary some grace because this was decades before you could ask ChatGPT for alternative names for a person who moves for a partner’s job and instantly get 15 suggestions neatly organized in 3 different categories (yes, of course, I did this.)

Before her article, the term “tied mover,” was used by economists to describe such a position. “Tied mover,” has major hostage undertones, so I suppose at that time the term “trailing spouse,” was a generous upgrade.

But here we are, 44 years later. Since then, the Berlin Wall has fallen, the iPod has come and gone, and we’ve lived through an entire global pandemic. We’ve even begun paying closer attention to people’s preferred pronouns, because words matter. They shape how we see ourselves and each other. And as long as we keep using a label like “trailing spouse,” we’re complicit in minimizing the contributions, sacrifices, and agency of those who make these global moves possible.

No one who uproots their life, carries the logistics of a family across borders, and rebuilds in an unfamiliar culture is trailing. We’re also leading, just in a different capacity.

So, what should we be called instead? If we’re honest, we should be called, “the spouse that holds all the things together,” but that’s wordy. I prefer something simple like, “supporting spouse.” In this article the author proposes the term “trailblazing spouse,” which is clever.

Drop your nominations in the comments, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Camp News!

Hey, hey, it’s been a while! Here’s what we’ve been up to:

• The 65th Nigerian Independence Day was October 1st. We celebrated on camp with a big party which included dancing, live music, food and palm wine. Palm wine is a traditional Nigerian drink that at first sip tastes similar to a mix of lemonade and sprite but, that’s not all, after you swallow it hits you with a sour milk after-taste which I simply couldn’t handle. Regardless, everyone had a great time celebrating our host country’s big day.

• We’ve survived another strike! This one didn’t impact the kids getting to school and was short lived which was a big relief. Strikes are common here and can escalate to dangerous situations quickly. You can read about our first local strike experience here in this newsletter.

• Rose house specific, but when this Newsletter goes out, we will be on our first vacation of the year! We’re doing a cruise from Spain to Italy and are so excited to see these gorgeous places and experience some good weather. We also plan to eat all the chocolate and churros, because, yum.

But here’s the truth: the word “never” is a catalyst for the universe to rub its hands together like a mischievous genie and stir force fields of karma into play. Next thing you know, you’re doing the exact thing you swore you’d never do.

You know it’s true.

And I do too.

Because that’s how I found myself in a dentist’s chair in Lagos, Nigeria.

I’d planned to go to the dentist in America this summer, but it didn't pan out for a number of reasons.

Because we’re expats in a hardship location, our summers in America quickly become a marathon of appointments: the doctor, the dentist, the optometrist, the hair stylist. And it’s not just my appointments, but the kids’ too. Sometimes all the appointments feel overwhelming.

In addition to what I’m going to term as “appointment exhaustion,” the dentist I was planning to visit didn’t accept my insurance. The out-of-pocket cost? $367 for an initial appointment and cleaning. That’s assuming I had no cavities or issues. I decided to take my chances, because I floss daily, which should count for something, right?

Wrong.

Pretty much the moment our airplane wheels touched down in Lagos, I began to feel a toothache.

Convinced I could cure it, I bought Listerine. Surely anything that tastes that horrible is effective, otherwise how has it survived as a product? Two weeks later, with little relief, I lost faith in Listerine and started to face a terrifying reality…I might have to see a dentist here in Lagos.

I know two people on our compound who’ve had crowns done here, only for them to fall out a few weeks later. There's also a horror story of an expat who went to the dentist and came back with permanent scratches on his teeth. This was a few years ago, but stories like this have the shelf life of a Twinkie. No one wants to be that person.

Humbled by a dull on-off pain, I Googled the only dentist anyone recommends here. (Yes, it’s the same place where someone’s teeth were famously scratched. And where the crowns fell out.) I typed ‘Smile 180’ into Google… except that’s not the name. It's called ‘Smile 360.’ Immediately I burst out laughing. Was this a foreshadowing of the dental adventure ahead?

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I was able to schedule my appointment easily via WhatsApp. In the US, dental offices are booked 6 months in advance. In Nigeria, they could get me in on Friday. It was Monday.

The woman I was chatting with wanted to make sure I understood: the dentist consultation for the pain would be 11,000 Naira, plus a fee for the x-ray and cleaning. My jaw dropped. 11,000 Naria is $7.30 USD (at today’s exchange rate.) I didn’t know whether to be thrilled or terrified at how cheap it was. But as the price sunk in, the feeling became clear, I was terrified.

The night before the appointment, I had a nightmare.

I was sitting in a resident’s meeting for our estate (which happens every quarter in real life) when every dental crown I’ve ever had started falling out. I was frantically trying to gather all the crowns and put them in a plastic bag so they wouldn’t get lost. Then I woke up drenched in sweat.

The morning of the appointment, I was faced with another nightmare: Lagos traffic. It took me and my driver 1.5 hours to travel the 9 miles to the dental office. This is normal here, where the infrastructure is nowhere close to sufficient for the approximately 18 million people that live in Lagos. Fortunately, I left very early in anticipation of this.

I showed up at Smile 360 fifteen minutes early, fully prepared to be seen thirty minutes late because, Nigeria. But to my surprise, they took me back almost immediately.

The visit began with a full tour of the dental office. Which felt odd, because dental offices aren’t exactly interesting. But what I gathered from the tour was how proud the staff were of their work. And that, I could appreciate.

After the grand tour, I was instructed to stand inside a big x-ray machine that spins around your whole head like a satellite. The machine looked brand new, and the process was fast. Next, I got out of the x-ray machine and had a photo shoot of my face and profile with a regular camera.

I was escorted to a dental chair where the lady that had been my photographer, morphed into a saleswoman for Invisalign. She showed me my pictures, zoomed in on my teeth and proceeded to point out all my God-given dental flaws. At almost 40 years old and having already survived braces once, I’ve made peace with my teeth.

Next, I was taken to another exam room, where I finally got what I came for: my seven-dollar consultation with the dentist.

To my surprise, the dentist wasn’t Nigerian, she was Indian. She looked at my problem tooth, asked about my pain and then told me the tooth looked good both from her inspection and the x-ray. She thought the pain I was experiencing was likely a gum pain (since when is this a thing?) She recommended I get my cleaning done and try using a water flosser.

All that stress, just to be told to use a water flosser?!

She left to go see other patients. I was led into yet another room for the cleaning. The cleaning was all pretty standard, other than a lot of water splashing on my face.

Then I was done.

In less than an hour I had completed:

• a grand office tour

• an x-ray

• regular profile pictures

• an Invisalign pitch

• a dental consultation

• a cleaning

That’s impressive.

But the most impressive part? The visit cost ₦57,400, or $38 USD. That covered everything: the consultation (₦11,200), the panoramic x-ray (₦25,200), and the cleaning (₦21,000).

My entire dentist visit in Nigeria had cost less than a single group Pilates class in Houston.

They even sent me off with coffee mug as a parting gift. And can we be honest for a second? A mug is a much better gift than the mini-floss and tiny toothpaste they give to you in America. No one wants that. We want a vat for coffee consumption, duh.

Since that visit, my gum pain has disappeared. I’ve found no scratches on my teeth, even after close inspection. And someday, I’ll get the water flosser, which my husband and I bought years ago, out of its box.

A few days after my appointment, I received an email from Smile 360.

It read, “we just want you to know that you can improve your smile with some procedures.”

It included these pictures:

Thanks, Smile 360.

How kind of you.

P.S.

On a serious note, I’d give Smile 360 and their staff 5/5 stars. If you’re in need of a cost-efficient dental exam (or a nice photoshopped picture for your LinkedIn profile) come on to Nigeria!

Getting through the Lagos airport was fine

The whole time we waited in the immigration line Teddy, exhausted from the 30+ hours of travel, kept falling asleep. He was seated on top of my suitcase with his little arms wrapped around the tall handle, his torso leaning onto it. Every few minutes he would fall into a deep enough sleep that he would start falling off the suitcase and his body would instinctively jerk back awake. He’d ask me if we could get on our bus yet, I’d say no, and the process would repeat. My heart broke for him.

After spending a full hour in the immigration line, which I’m convinced is the minimum time required for foreigners, (unless you pay them off, in which case you will be ushered in front of everyone else without question) we finally graduated onto baggage claim.

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Happy to be onto the next segment of this adventure, I entered the chaos that is trying to find one's bags at the Lagos airport. Whatever you have in your head about how baggage claims work in America, Europe or the rest of the developed world is nothing like the experience here. Instead, think crazed-Black-Friday-Sales crowds, mixed with WWE wrestling moves, all taking place on a dirty linoleum floor.

Thanks to the slow immigration line, by the time we arrived, all the baggage had long since been pulled off the conveyor belt and splayed across the floor. It was an obstacle course of luggage, luggage carts and humans.

My husband’s company contracts another company to help us with this portion of the airport. Even with help, it’s not for the faint of heart. You need to be OK with some pushing, yelling and shoving. If you get jostled, it's not personal and you shouldn’t receive it that way.

Don't mistake something that’s cultural for something personal.

That’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in this entire expat experience as a whole. I repeat it to myself often and would recommend it to anyone traveling internationally.

I found a small spot on a bench next to an elderly Nigerian lady who had 10 suitcases stacked next to her. I told Ray and Teddy to sit down, so they’d be out of the chaos and I prepared to enter it and find our bags. As I was making sure the boys were settled, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a guy swinging fists at two immigration officers who were trying to contain him.

“Gimme me back my passport!” He yelled. Drama on this level is normal at the Lagos airport. Unconcerned, I continued on my mission.

I had brought so much back it wouldn't all fit into my luggage. Before we left I had purchased 4 giant Tupperware bins at Lowes to aid me in my attempt to bring a year's worth of Oreos and tortilla chips into the country. After one full circle around the obstacle course, I found my suitcases. But the Tupperware containers were nowhere to be found.

Half an hour later, we found the Tupperware.

They had been stored in a separate area of the airport where strollers and other large luggage is unloaded. Relieved to have all my junk food accounted for, we headed to the final challenge of the Lagos airport: customs.

First, they demanded I put all my baggage through an x-ray machine, which I did one heavy back at a time while they all stood watching.

I’d hardly finished loading the last bag into the x-ray, when the first customs lady began her act. She was a large Nigerian woman who marched up to my face and loudly began barking orders that I open every single bag.

“Sure.” I replied.

She pointed to a random Tupperware for me to open first.

“What’d you just say?!” she roared.

“I said, ‘sure’” I replied, confused, why her anger was escalating.

“What do you mean?!” She roared again.

“I said sure…as in no problem.” I tried to diffuse her anger with my tone as I wondered if the word “sure" wasn't translating.

She began aggressively digging through the Tupperware and honed in on a grocery bag full of HEB taco seasoning.

“What is this? You can’t have this.” She yelled. Before I could answer, she found something even better, an unopened Lego set I was bringing in for CJ.

“Where’s the invoice for this?” She demanded.

“I don't have an invoice for that.”

“You can't just bring toys here from another country and not pay import tax. How much did this cost? I need to see the invoice now!”

“I don't know how much it cost and I don’t have an invoice," I repeated, beginning to feel desperate. I knew the way out of this situation was to give her Naira, but Cj’s company has a strict no bribes policy, and coming from an entire summer in America I had no Nigerian cash on me. I scanned my brain for a solution, any solution, but exhaustion had the best of me.

I’d come to terms with the fact that she’d be keeping the brand new Lego set. Cj would need to order a new one. But then, in a divine moment, the solution presented itself. Teddy, beyond tired, stepped forward. His face showing the saddest frown, his bottom lip puckered out and and his little belly protruding. He didn’t say a word, just dropped his head and looked at the ground. Tears were imminent.

“That's who the Lego is for,” I said seizing the opportunity. Never mind that that wasn’t who the Lego was for and I had no idea why he was so sad other than he wanted to get on the bus.

As if by magic, her entire demeanor shifted. She looked to the ground and said, “it's ok, you can go.”

I wanted to hug Teddy and tell him, “great job, buddy!” Instead, I held it together and began bounding toward the exit.

But no

Another group of customs people stopped us, because passing the heckling of one isn't enough.

“That bag right there” the customs man yelled pointing to another one of my suitcases, “it has ice in it. Open it immediately!”

This was true. Right before arriving at the airport in Houston, I had literally met up with a total stranger who handed off a cooler of ice and delicate medicine to me to take back to Lagos for a camp neighbor. These are the kinds of things we do for each other in the expat world. I hadn’t thought twice about saying yes.

“It's not meat. It’s medicine.” I told him plainly.

“For what?” He challenged.

This is where things got tricky, because while I’d agreed to bring the medicine back, I didn't know what it was or what it was for.

“Toe fungus,” I said, mentally coaching myself to keep a straight face.

I could tell he was both surprised and repulsed by my answer. I bent down to open the suitcase so he could inspect it, but he stopped me.

“Nah don’t worry about it. I know you're not lying to me….Where are you from?”

“America.” I answered as I stood back up, ready to actually leave the airport this time.

“Hey,” he whispered as I was walking off. “How’s my American accent? Does it sound correct?”

And with this ridiculous question, I was finally done with the Lagos airport. Until next time.

PS.

I still owe you Holly’s leaving Lagos story part 2. It’ll come next, but I thought I’d share my own firsthand airport experience for this month. Keep in mind, the story above is a fairly average airport experience. In no way would I classify it as bad for Lagos airport. Leaning into the airport experience has been fun, and while the time we spent there is relatively short compared to our time in country as a whole, it's easily one of the things that makes living here so hard and dreadful.

Camp News:

• We came back to one of the biggest camp crises of all time: the pool is out of commission. Apparently, there are multiple leaks and a possible sink hole that has developed underneath it as a result. Thankfully, our country manager and his wife have allowed us to use their personal pool for some weekend reprieve.

• To top the broken pool crisis, the beloved espresso machine at the Rose house broke last week. In America, a broken espresso machine would stink, but could be replaced with the click of a button and 24 hours. In Nigeria getting a broken espresso machine replaced or fixed is a journey…one which will likely last at least a month. Thanks to great neighbors we’ve remained caffeinated during this difficult time.

• Last week, my driver and I were stopped by the cops. He did nothing wrong (this is always the first question Americans ask about traffic stops). In Nigeria, cops pull cars over for no reason. They demanded to get in the car - again. Some of you will remember the first incident where corrupt cops got into our car in THIS newsletter. At least this time, they didn't get into the car with me (thanks to my driver). But they did hold me up for a good 45-minutes and gave my driver a ticket for not allowing them to practice blatant extortion and get a bribe from me. This isn’t what the ticket said, but it’s what it was for.

• I’ll be starting my part-time job at the American International school next week! I’m excited to get back into the swing of this.

• For anyone following my Air France saga where a scammer canceled $6,000 worth of my family's flights, I have good news. In their answer to my complaint to US DOT, Air France awarded us about half the money back in the form of vouchers. I’ll take it!

• On a final and super fun note, while we have several trips planned for the year, the one I am most excited for is a gorilla trekking trip I’m working on for January 2026. Sometimes this expat experience makes me want to pull all my hair out in frustration, other times it makes me want to pinch myself in disbelief of how cool our actual lives are.

It starts with a 9.5-hour flight to Amsterdam, followed by a 7-hour layover, followed by a final 6.5-hour flight. With over 30 hours of travel time door-to-door, I’m guaranteed to be the worst version of myself by the time we arrive.

In a week the kids’ will begin their 3rd school year in Nigeria. I have no idea how that’s possible, but here we are. As I’ve packed the boys and I up over the past few days, I’ve been feeling all the feelings, but especially anxiety.

It’s times like this when I wonder why Capri Sun hasn’t invented an adult version of their juice packs, but instead of fruit punch you punch the straw in and get a small dose of nitrous oxide. I could probably make it through the 2 long flights and the dreaded Nigerian airport, solo with kids if I had something of this nature.

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It’s easily the airport I’m dreading the most, even over flying (and I hate flying). Which is why I think today’s post is good one for sharing part one of my friend Holly’s nightmare story of leaving as it begins in the airport. Part two of her story will come in the future as it was too long to put all in one place.

This was done in interview format. I’ve written my questions and comments in regular font and hers in bold font.

1. Tell us about the Nigerian airport on a regular day:

Steve (another one of our campmates) has traveled more than anyone I’ve ever met, and even he calls Lagos airport the worst. So, I feel fairly confident calling it the worst airport in the world.

The bathrooms are dirty: they have wet floors, no toilet paper or paper towels and yet, there’s always a lady sitting there expecting you to pay her…I don’t know what for?

There’s almost no edible food, except for the Heineken Lounge, although per your Instagram stories, there’s occasionally bugs that fly around there.

I would like to inform you that the “bugs flying around” which Holly is referring to here, are more specifically, roaches. And, yes, I have proof as I once filmed a roach flying around at this lounge for my Instagram stories. As I was filming the roach slowly began raising its antennas into the air and waving them back and forth. Then, it started flying my direction, at which point the video became chaotic and I began doing a panic-dance. This raised some initial questions with the workers, such as, “are OK” and “are you alright?” but their concern quickly dissipated when I told them it was a roach. “Oh, sorry, sorry,” they replied as if I had said I was out of coke.

One other thing worth mentioning about the Heineken Lounge is that it’s smoky in there. While most of the US has banned indoor smoking, the Heineken Lounge in Lagos enjoys exposing its customers to plenty of second-hand smoke. What’s air quality, anyway?

Outside of the lounge, the airport has all of these flashing fluorescent lights everywhere which is sketchy. The AC doesn’t work well, and mind you, it’s super-hot in Nigeria.

And then sometimes they just close the airline check in desk because they’ve oversold the flight, and this is how they’re deciding who makes it on the plane.

Also, they still use manual ticketing; nothing is electronic. You can’t check in electronically or get an electronic boarding pass. It all has to be done manually, which takes a long time.

I’ll add that, because of this, you also get no flight updates on your phone or app. For example, in a normal airport, you can look on your app to find where your gate is. If it changes, the app will update that. In Nigeria - best of luck to you. They typically hand-write the gate on the boarding pass, but if they forget (which has happened) or if it changes, I hope you’re agile and fast on your feet. The same with flight delays and cancellations, there is no electronic messaging for this. You also can’t check in electronically ahead of time for any flights coming or going to Nigeria. Type A friends, you’ll never survive.

The airport has no monitors or screens to update any flight or gate status and has very little signage as to what gate numbers are located where. It’s often hot and poorly lit (as Holly mentioned earlier). It almost feels like a haunted house experience as you try to navigate to or from your gate.

What else is fun about the Nigerian airport?

Oh, they recently made a brand-new wing. But the people who made the plans were either being cheap or crooked and stole the design plans from another airport. They didn’t realize that the international planes that fly in and out of Nigeria are much bigger, so the international planes don’t fit in the new wing, and everyone has to take shuttles to the international planes which are forced to park out on the runway.

Yeah, that’s pretty Nigerian.

Anyway.

The airport is bad.

This article, “The New MMIA Terminal, A Symbol of Nigeria’s Problems,” is an amazingly well written article about the “new wing” Holly’s referring to here. I won’t quote the whole article, but I think the opening and closing are worth sharing:

“This story fits in a nutshell. Nigeria built a billion-dollar airport terminal that was too small for most of the aircraft it was intended to house, resulting in underutilization and a facility unfit for use and purpose….Nigeria will never become an economic power if we keep executing like quacks and amateurs. Neither can it be successful when corruption is approved as a national way of life.”

This is where my interview with Holly will end for today. Keep in mind, we didn’t get into one of the biggest issues at the airport which was called out by the author in the article referenced above: corruption.

I’ve been asked for money and “blessings” by immigration officials on multiple occasions. One time one of the workers even followed me into the security line to beg for a job at my husband’s company. One of the worst horror stories from camp is from a friend who had all of her jewelry stolen out of her bag. I’m leaving this all at broad strokes for today because you get the idea.

As much as I’m dreading journeying through the airport, and whatever shenanigans customs and immigration has prepared for us, I’m equally excited to get back to camp and see everyone. Especially CJ. An eyewitness recently messaged me that he’s concerned because CJ is surviving on cheerios exclusively.

I hope it goes without saying, we welcome your prayers as we journey back.

A big thank you to Holly, for sharing about the Lagos airport with us for this post.

P.S.

We had to buy all new flights to get back home as Air France refused to do anything to help after a scammer canceled our flights. If you want to read the whole story, I wrote it up here. It’s the first post I’ve ever made on reddit (I’m just desperate and sharing anywhere at this point), but with over 125,000 views, it’s gotten some good traction.

It’s all been pretty horrible, but we’re in good spirits. Also, I’ll be annoying Air France until they decide to help fix the situation. Cheers to the persistence that I’ve learned in Nigeria. It does come in handy, after all.

Being back in America is so nice, it feels gluttonous: the food, the grocery stores, the coffee shops. Amazing. And we’ve also had some nice family time. We’ve been busy playing in the cold river water in Michigan, playing in Southwest Texas on my uncle’s ranch, and now playing in the heart of Houston. Pretending that we have American lifestyles even if the charade will be short lived. The kids and I fly back in early August. CJ is already back, doing Nigeria camp and work life without us, which he reports is boring (and likely quiet in the absence of Teddy.)

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Even though we are safe and enjoying Texas, many not far from here, are in the midst of tragedy from the recent flooding. I’m sure you’ve read about as it made the news everywhere, even my driver from Nigeria texted me last week to see if we were ok.

I’ve been praying for everyone in Central Texas: those still on the ground searching, those left to weep and mourn the loss of their loved ones, and the many communities that will have to rebuild and move forward with the loss of so many wonderful people and kids.

I understand that flooding can happen all over the world, but when it also takes so many lives, I expect it to occur in Nigeria where infrastructure and resources are non-existent, or at best lacking, not in central Texas. It’s a shocking reality when it’s the later. I’m reminded of words I wrote in a newsletter last summer, “Apparently, things can go horribly wherever you are. This is an unfortunate truth of the human condition.”

When things feel heavy, I like to make a levity list. A simple list of ways I’ve seen grace and beauty lately. It’s a list of non-critical information to help invoke critical emotions, like hope and joy.

1. NEW BOOTS from Charlotte Stone.

This is the coolest shoe company, because several pairs of their shoes coordinate, but don’t match, which is a type of funky I love. I’ve been eyeing these boots (they match, but still fun) for months now, but living in Nigeria it’s not as simple as just ordering them. There’s not a reliable mail service there, in fact, quite the opposite is true. It wasn’t until we were stateside that I could physically order and receive them, but they’re worth the wait! Wearing them brings me joy, even if they’re made from suede which is annoyingly high maintenance.

2. The total stranger that stopped and waited at least 15 minutes while we captured a ram and guided it back to my uncle’s ranch.

As it turns out, rams (also known as transcaspian urials if you prefer the sophisticated term) are expensive animals. Which is why it was a problem when one someone escaped the ranch fence and was trying to headbutt its way back in. My sister, her husband, my dad, and cousin all devised a plan to get it back in through a large gate. Our plan was underway when a stranger came driving down the road in a giant pick-up truck. This ram was terrified of vehicles, and we knew the whole plan would be ruined if the truck kept going. So, my cousin went and explained the situation to them, and to my awe, they stopped and waited patiently while we got the ram back onto the ranch. I would’ve been annoyed; they didn’t mind at all.

3. Bitty and Beau’s Coffee

It’s a “human rights movement, disguised as a coffeeshop.” Their simple mission is changing the way people see other people by employing at least 80% of the people who have intellectual and developmental disabilities. The one in Houston opened in 2023, and I’ve gone every day this week since I found it. Both the coffee and customer service are fabulous.

The original coffee shop began in North Carolina with one family who wanted to employ their own children with Downs Syndrome, Bitty and Beau. As of this writing, they now have 17 locations in 12 different states!

4. Ryan Trahan

Ryan Trahan is a Youtuber that Ray watches, that I actually really like and approve of! He is currently traveling through 50 states in 50 days to raise money for St Jude Hosptial. His original goal was to raise 1 million USD, but as of day 31 he’s already raised almost 4 million! Ray really wanted me to donate, but I really disappointed him when I said we couldn’t donate 50K and make Ryan spin his infamous “wheel of doom,” like Mr. Beast did. Sorry, Ray. If you want to watch the series here’s a good video of him explaining the rules of his road trip!

5. My Friend’s Weird Side Hustle

Speaking of St. Jude, one of my good friends is a pharmacist there and she is also raising money for the hospital. But that’s not why I put her on the list. She’s on the list because of her weird new side hustle, Samantha’s Saloon. She started a little “fun” business fixing up American Girl dolls. I’ve listened to many explanations of how to fix broken doll eyeballs, repair doll amputations and eliminate doll mold problems. If you need an American Girl doll repaired or just want to give her FB page a follow, click HERE. If want to donate to St Jude on her behalf, click HERE. Her goal is 3,000 USD and she only has $580 left to go!

6. Witnessing our Nigerian and American lives collide

This has its challenges, like when I dropped Teddy off for soccer camp and then watched him cry in frustration because he didn’t know how to play “Duck, Duck, Goose,” with the other kids. A similar situation occurred when we went to the Dude Perfect live show and the whole audience was singing and doing arm motions to the song, “YMCA,” with the exception of Ray and Teddy, who were just looking around the room blankly.

While we get to learn about cultures around the world, we also miss cultural things here in America like games and songs. But mostly, this overlap has been amazing. Seeing friends from Nigeria, here in America is the best of all worlds. After spending time with our friends from Nigeria in Michigan this summer, I realized that there are still gifts to be discovered in this expat-life, even 2 years in.

7.Our Airbnb host, who also owns Houston Segway Tours and offered us a free segway tour!

I’m currently staying at an Airbnb in Houston and our Host also owns and operates Segway Tours of Houston. She generously offered a friend and I a free segway tour. I had never done a segway tour before, but this blew my expectations. Riding the segway was fun, and we learned so much about the history of Houston and got to see a lot of beautiful murals.

10/10 recommend doing a segway tour with her company if you find yourself in Houston!

8. Lastly, doing an F45 class with my mom who was recovering from major brain surgery this time last year.

Also, she’s 72 and had no problem keeping up with this high paced, HITT style class! I’m forever inspired.

I hope this list made you think of your own current levity list. I’d love to hear what’s on it in the comments.

Yesterday, I woke up to find all of our (mine, Teddy and Ray’s) Air France flights had been canceled due to someone medaling with my Air France account. For context, I had called a few weeks ago about moving a flight date, and somewhere either within the calls or with the chat bot, I had gotten in touch with not Air France, but scammers. I spent most of yesterday in a panicked tailspin trying to recover our flights to no avail.

My friend who had come to visit for the weekend joined me in this mission, even though doing anything else would’ve been more fun. Before she left to drive back to San Antonio, where she lives, she gave me a hug and said, “I still think good people have to win in the end.” It reminded me of this Bible verse which I will share in closing:

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1:5

Newsletter Updates:

1. A Day in the Life with my friend Holly’s family leaving Nigeria is coming in August! We finally did our interview together and I’m working on transcribing it all. This will be our next newsletter as we fly back to Nigeria August (after we buy new flights, of course. NOT from Air France.) I’ll be jet-lag-drunk for at least a week after that which will be fun combined with back-to-school madness.

2. If you’re missing hearing about Nigeria, I highly recommend my camp friend Alyssa’s post, “Reflections from Nigeria.” While her Substack mostly features articles about AI, this is a beautifully written reflection on her 4 years in Nigeria and her experiences living there.

Between the many end-of-school-year parties in Lagos, traveling to and from 3 continents (and the jet lag that follows), plus the indulgent amount of wine and cheese we consumed in France, I gave myself a permission slip to be tardy on this update.

To be an expat in a hardship location, is to live in extremes that are hard to comprehend. One day you’re sitting in traffic in the most populous (and extremely poverty-stricken) city on the entire continent of Africa while small kids tap on your car window and beg for money. A day’s travel later, you’re in a small city in southern France consuming enough wine and cheese to suffice a bear for his winter hibernation. Yes, there is guilt that comes with this. But there is also gratitude. And these feelings cycle back and forth in my mind like laundry in a washer.

Now that my family is back, we’re celebrating all our American-life firsts of the summer: first trip to Target, first trip to Chick-Fil-a, first trip to Kroger’s. Honestly, the abundance of things and convenience of life here is overwhelming coming from Nigeria. I constantly have to remind myself that I do not need to buy and hoard everything. But the feeling of scarcity coming from Lagos is hard to shake.

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On finding different versions of yourself

I recently read the article, “10 Things No One Tells You About Living Abroad Until You Do It.” One of the points in the article that resonated with me was this one: when you move abroad, “you don’t ‘find yourself’, but you do find a different version of you.”

It’s the name to something I’ve felt for a long time. The Nigerian version of me is more abrasive and more assertive than the American me could ever imagine. I’m quick to escalate an issue to the manager, constantly doubting the truth of anything someone says and always hot and sweaty. So hot. So sweaty.

In her book, Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert says it this way:

“One of the oldest and most generous tricks that the universe plays on human beings is to bury strange jewels within us all and then stand back to see if we can find them.”

The problem is that the Nigerian jewel that is buried in me has questionable value

Like, I’m wondering if its Fool’s Gold or possibly a type of Kryptonite?

This past Christmas we were riding on a train in Belgium I closed my eyes for a few minutes to rest. I opened them to find a train conductor guy standing over me and glaring, pointing to my feet that were propped on the seat in front of me.

I looked at him, waiting for him to say something.

He continued to glare in disgust.

“You can just kindly ask me to move my feet.” I snapped. “You don’t have to be rude. It’s not a big deal.”

Unimpressed with my response, he and I argued back and forth for a bit, until he threated to charge me a 50 Euro fine. I apologized against my will. He moved along to find someone else to glare at.

As we got off the train my husband whispered in my ear, “Wow, you really went full Nigeria on that guy.”

To my horror, he was right. And I hadn’t thought twice about it.

The optimist in me wants to think that maybe, when we do move back to America, I’ll figure out a way to harness my newfound assertiveness into some wonderful skill or job role. Perhaps, there is yet another version I’ll discover of myself? The one that has lived in Nigeria but has reacclimated to America in the healthiest way possible.

But I fear becoming a lady with a red-headed temper and Nigerian attitude is also a strong possibility. Only time will tell y’all.

A Day in the Life Update:

Good news, bad news: My friend Holly has agreed to tell us all about her trip out of Lagos, but she thinks she’s a bad writer. So, she and I have decided I will interview her when she and her boys come visit us in Michigan (in a few weeks) and I’ll write up her trip out of Lagos and the chaos that ensued.

Get Ready because: Flights were canceled. Hotels were not accommodating. Cats were left in luggage rooms. People almost wet their pants and missed their layovers. But alas, it has a happy ending! Holly and her family have made it back to Houston and are enjoying the perks of HEB so much that it brings tears of joy to her eyes.

Travel Recommendations:

For the summer, I’m exchanging our normal Nigerian Education moment for travel tips and recommendations.

1. Country Kids Resort in Southern France:

• First, I have to recommend Country Kids resort in Southern France. It’s like an exhausted parent dreamed up a resort and brought it to life. Everything was actually included in our week visit, including one spa service per person, two off campus excursions (they had a list for us to choose from), a wonderful kids club, all the good wine and cheese we could dream of, and really fresh wonderful meals. We were also able to stay in a spacious apartment, versus a tiny hotel room, which is always welcome.

  

• Country kids is especially well equipment for babies and toddlers as they even have free diapers onsite, kid toys in each apartment and cribs and toddler gear. They are a smaller resort as they only have 7 apartments onsite, so your family gets great attention with anything you need or want. My kids are 4 and 8 and had a wonderful time. They especially loved going to feed all the farm animals each morning. We hope to return!

  

• The only downsides are that 1. It was buggy out there. They did have bug spray, and we definitely used it. And 2. the roads where it was located were very narrow and often one-way streets, so it was a bit intimating to drive there. There were also lots of round abouts because, Europe.

2. Paris with kids:

• Space Invaders. When I did my girls trip to Paris, my friend kept pointing out these space themed street art mosaics. We finally learned these are done by a certain street artist and even have an app where you can collect them! Fast forward to our family trip, my 8-year-old Ray had so much fun with this app. I honestly think we could do a whole week in Paris just collecting these and he’d be content. Also, since we’re talking about it, this “Paris Invaders Map” app gives you a cheat code to where all the mosaics can be found!

• Macaroon class! Our kids had such a good time at this macaroon making class.

• Although we didn’t make it here, the Jardin Du Luxembourg has really cool remote controlled mini sailboats that kids can drive for only 7 euros. It was highly recommended in many travel blogs and remains on our list for next time! They also have a playground and lots of other play activities onsite.

3. Travel Reading Recommendation:

I’ve been reading the book Driving Over Lemons, which is a memoir of a couple who move from England to a farm in rural Spain, knowing nothing about how to run it. It’s a great low-key read, that brings about the loveliest visions of the Spanish countryside and the story of how the author makes his life there.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), I know a few people on camp who’ve had these and I was able to get helpful advice on how to extract it. Basically, suffocate it with a bandage and Neosporin and then extract its body with tweezers the next day. The internet also mentioned that you could put raw meat on top of the area and the larva may crawl out. This sounds like a fun experiment for next time. The poor lady who wrote to her butt-larva, actually had to have hers surgically removed, so they can, on occasion, become a bigger problem than tweezers can solve.

Aside from the larvae incident, as we enter into May, I’m feeling a lot of gratitude. It’s amazing the perspective a year of time brings. It's a quiet gift that, without reflection, could go unnoticed. But another school year living in Nigeria has brought so many blurry edges into focus. It has brought acceptance of some things and a sort of non-closure to other things here that will never make sense.

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Last year, I watched people who were repatriating to America cry and I wondered what was wrong with them. This year I understand…. You don't enjoy living in Nigeria the way you enjoy ice cream. You enjoy living in Nigeria the way you enjoy the smell of gasoline. The fumes are likely toxic for your health, not everyone understands it, and even knowing all this you still like it. The noise, chaos and unpredictability grow on you in a weird way. And even better, you begin to appreciate the kindness of the people here (excluding airport customs personnel we won’t talk about them), the creativity of the art and fashion and the amazing abilities of the many craftsmen and women.

This time last year, I was unsure if moving to Africa was worth all the sweat, stress and tears. Unsure if we could live here for 2 more years. But this school year brought reassurance. I was given an unexpected job which I’m so grateful for. While I had always worked previously, I hadn’t done pediatric occupational therapy in over a decade. Getting back into it at the International School of Lagos has felt like reconnecting with a part of myself I’d almost forgotten existed. More importantly, this year brought fun. Our family has taken some of the most epic trips of our lives, we’ve met new friends, said goodbye to friends (this is the reality of expat life) and I’ve even become consistent with a few hobbies, like Pilates class.

That's not to say Nigeria's challenges have disappeared. Just this week I tried to send my driver to school to deliver donuts to Ray’s class for his 8th birthday. I told all the class parents and the teacher that I would be supplying the class snack for the day. But our company car broke down on the way to school and my driver had to deal with that. So, I asked a neighbor’s driver to go purchase and deliver the donuts.

My neighbor decided she would also like a few donuts of various flavors for herself, so in addition to my order, she asked the driver for a separate order of various flavored donuts to be delivered to her house after the school drop off. Despite explicit instructions, something got lost in translation. What was supposed to be 20 plain glazed donuts delivered to the school was actually 6 glazed donuts and 6 donuts of various flavors and a bag of donut holes.

The donuts dropped off at school were not even enough for each kid in Ray’s class! I have no idea how the teacher managed to give these out, but Ray got a glazed donut and was happy, thus the biggest crisis was averted. My neighbor and I had a good venting session about how this all went awry, but then life went on.

They say there’s four stages of culture shock: 1. The Honeymoon Stage, 2. The Negotiation Stage 3. The Adjustment Stage and 4. The Acceptance Stage. I think when you get to the point of digging a fly larva out of your own leg on a casual Sunday and aren’t phased by it, it's safe to say you've successfully reached “The Acceptance Stage.”

What's interesting to me about the four stages of culture shock is how alike they are to the five stages of grief: 1. Denial 2. Bargaining 3. Anger 4. Depression 5. Acceptance. You would think losing a loved one would be an entirely different process than moving to a foreign country as they are vastly different events. But both have similarities, which makes me wonder if all these stages are really just part of the hard work of being human. Yes, we will experience them in big ways during drastic changes or tragic loss, but perhaps we experience these things in small ways regularly.

I think the end goal of all the stages whether it be grief, culture shock or traversing the challenges of Monday, isn't so much getting through them, but to bear them gracefully, carrying grace for both ourselves, and each other.

Grace, after all, is the real win.

His book, To Bless this Space Between us, John O Donohue defines grace like this:

“Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness. There are no limits to it; it has no compartments, corners or breakage in its flow…. Where before gravity and deadness had prevailed, there is now a sense of animation and lightness. Where there was grief, a new sense of presence comes alive. In the wall of blindness, a window of vision opens.”

Nigerian Education Moment:

Palm wine is an alcoholic drink often drunk in West Africa at Wedding celebrations. Some of our camp friends were kind enough to bring it to a camp hang out for everyone to try. Although after tasting it, I’m suspicious they did it more for entertainment value than kindness.

Just so you know, palm wine smells exactly like hair-perm chemicals, and it tastes like a combination of half lemonade and half nail polish remover. This article states it has many health claims, including curing erectile function disorder! But my camp friend says we should take Nigerian medical claims lightly as her stewardess told her that her high blood pressure was a result of my friend’s cold AC running in the house, per the stewardess’s doctor.

Camp News:

• Good news! The bridge that they closed and then quickly re-opened, is now completely safe (according to the Nigerian Government.) The bad news is that there is a different bridge which now needs repairs. The work is planned to start May 6th (tomorrow) and last until September 23. We are all praying it doesn’t lead to utter grid lock like the previous bridge closure, but I’ve already started hoarding food, just in case. I recently read an article that asked a really good question: “At the heart of this development lies a broader question that has dogged Lagosians for decades: Can Africa’s largest megacity modernise its ageing infrastructure without paralyzing its economic arteries?”

• Last weekend we had a camp-wide field day and Songkran. Songkran is the Thai New Year and it's probably one of the most fun celebrations I’ve ever experienced. They load up water guns and have a giant water fight with each other. Of course, this was a big hit on camp with the kids and grownups alike. Our Thai camp neighbors also gifted our camp with a whole roasted pig! My favorite part of Songkran was that my Thai neighbor, Vicky, who you may remember from my Nigerian food adventure, let me borrow a traditional Thai outfit. This was so much fun to wear.

  

• We also had an Easter egg hunt the weekend before last, so what I’m telling you is that your girl (who was volun-told to be Children’s Coordinator last year) has been busy! It was all worth it because the kids had a blast.

• Rose family specific news: In exactly 26 days we are heading to a family resort in Southern France and then we’ll go to America for the Summer. We’re looking forward to all of it, especially Starbucks, Chick fil a, McDonalds, Tex-Mex and shopping at HEB.

The Next Day in the Life post:

• The guest post would be from my friend Holly, who hasn’t agreed to this at all, but might if this option wins! Her family basically had the worst trip leaving the country to move back to America as their flight out was canceled at 2 AM and they were stranded at the Lagos airport with 2 kids, 2 cats plus baggage. Chaos ensued.

• The other options are pretty self-explanatory. You have 3 days to vote!