Archives
It has been quite the summer in the United States. As we mentioned before, we came to the US in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. With rising reports of COVID19 cases in South Africa and a desire to be near family as we wait out the pandemic, we decided to return to the US. It was a challenging decision to make as we had developed quite the routine in Johannesburg and… Read More
Sheila and I have been in the United States now for six weeks. I was recently telling someone that after four months locked up in our apartment, we developed quite the COVID19 response plan for leaving our house. It included sanitizer, antiseptic wipes and a mask. Whenever we entered a business place in Johannesburg, we would have to sanitize again because every business required you to wear a mask and sanitize before… Read More
Booking a flight when the international airport and land borders closed is difficult. We had to wait until the US Embassy announced repatriation flights. At the end of June, the US Embassy released a list of flights through mid-July that included a July 11 flight to Amsterdam on KLM. We initially tried to book the flight out of Johannesburg but was too late. By the time I could talk to Sheila about… Read More
Our review is a bit late this year as we were traveling through the United States and found ourselves in Turkey after the New Year. But 2018 has come to an end. The year began on a sour note as Sheila had just departed for the United Kingdom where she was starting a masters program in Psychology. However, the end of 2018 finds us back together again in our cozy Abuja apartment…. Read More
I haven’t lived in Alabama since April 2003. In March of that year, with no job or source of steady income, I packed up all my things and headed off to pursue my dreams of working on Capitol Hill. What played out in my head as a picture perfect fantasy turned out to be a roller coaster reality. I struggled to embrace the changing weather patterns, found it difficult to relate to… Read More
In April, Sheila and I traveled to the United States for Easter. We were on a mission! Our first goal was to visit the most magical place on earth…and after some close flights, we arrived in Orlando where we had a personal visit with the top mouse himself, Mickey. (Our connections were tight because the U.S. Customs & Border protection agents had some additional questions for my wife. I thought I was… Read More
June 4, 2017 was the date of our first wedding anniversary. It is hard to believe that it’s been a year. It feels like just yesterday we were arriving in Abuja settling into our new life as husband and wife. But 365 days later and ten countries visited during our first year of marriage, we are moving into year two of #Shentell. We wanted to share our wedding video to celebrate our… Read More
As usual, I have another story of traveling in Nigeria. It started with a delayed flight from Abuja (from 12:10pm to 1:40pm), a race between the domestic terminal and the international terminal in Lagos to catch our next flight and a small “tip” (that’s what I’m calling it) to ensure we caught our Emirates flight on time. All in all, it was probably one of the most stressful departures I have experienced… Read More
It’s been hard waking up since getting back to Nigeria. Maybe I am still trying to shake jet lag or maybe I just miss being in the United States (mixture of both). For two weeks, Sheila and I crisscrossed Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland visiting family and catching up with friends. It was a whirlwind tour for Sheila as it was her first trip to the US and… Read More
A FREDAY in AFRICA! 