I took a serious blow when my father passed away on June 7. I’ll never forget that day. My sister, my mom and I were literally on the phone when he took his last breath.

But after the initial grief and shock, the real work began—planning a funeral in another country.

All I can say is thank God for my Uncle. He was my dad’s best friend and is the only Uncle who lives in the United States. He guided us through the entire process of a Nigerian funeral.

Right away, my siblings (two brothers and a sister) and I had to tell people the news, purchase plane tickets, make decisions pertaining to funeral plans and budget for those decisions accordingly.

Sidenote: How do you Americans turn around a funeral so quickly? The bodies aren’t even cold by the time you hold the service. I applaud you all.

Because of new town laws, the funeral had to take place no more than two months after my dad’s death. We set the funeral for Aug. 7.

A couple things that were working against us:

1. Our Nigerian passports had expired, and accordingly to the U.S. Embassy, renewals weren’t being processed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
2. Nigeria suspended international commercial flights in March, and the date of resumption was still pending.

Basically, everything we needed to leave the country was a no go. We booked our flights anyways.

An Embassy Emergency

Passport renewals weren’t happening, and only one Nigerian Embassy in the U.S. was open at the time, but my brother was able to get more information about an Emergency Travel Certificate (ETC).

For an ETC, you have to plead your case to the embassy about why you need to urgently travel and include your travel information. If approved, you are granted a document that allows you to enter the country for that one visit.

The four of us turned in all the required documents for an ETC. My sister’s application arrived a week late, although it was shipped before mine. And my brother forgot to send a paid return envelope with his paperwork.

But guess what? My sister received her travel certificate around the same time we did. We didn’t know what in the world would happen to my brother’s application, but it was delivered to my other brother’s house with both of their certificates like a two-fer. Look at God! 🙌🏾

We just had to figure out this international flight situation.

A No-Fly Zone

We bought our flights early in hopes that the country would open in the coming weeks. Afterall, the domestic flights began running again on July 8. The international flights weren’t going to be too far behind, right?

July 8 passed. Then it was July 15. Then July 22. Our flight was on Aug. 1.

We held out hopes for the flight until we received disheartening news from the airline company—our leg of the trip that went to Nigeria was being canceled.

Despite that, we packed our bags and headed to the airport on Aug. 1 (like any logical person would do).

I don’t know what we expected to hear at the airport. I thought that we would at least be able to leave the country and go to our layover country of Germany. Nope! Germany didn’t want any COVID-ridden Americans in their country without a purpose, so we continued the wait game in the States.

My oldest brother and sister were in Texas with me waiting, not knowing exactly what we were waiting for.

My brother in Kansas City called us to let us know he was having no luck leaving the country as well. So, we told him to do the only logical thing we could think of.

“Hey! Why don’t you come here to Texas?”

“Huh? What am I going to do there?”

“Be with us.” 

So, my brother got on a plane to meet us and strategize our next moves. 🧐

Entertaining Angels

As we waited for my brother to land, we had our share of tests at the airport.

Coincidentally, there was an evacuation flight to Lagos going out that same day. (Of course there was…)

As we sat there, being denied our flight, people were enthusiastically walking by with a one-way ticket to the place we wanted to go.

An older woman, her father and two trolleys full of luggage were next to us. The woman asked us to watch her luggage. Later, my sister helped the woman push one of her trolleys all the way up to the check-in counter for the flight to Nigeria. Their flight, not ours.

We later walked outside the airport to a bus shuttle.

And then, in a move that had to be the epitome of God’s sense of humor, a shuttle stops in front of us and opens its doors.

An elderly woman who was moving painfully slower than I can even describe took about five minutes just to walk down the steps and exit the vehicle. The driver helped her with her luggage, and there we were—left alone with a woman we knew had no business traveling by herself.

She was going on the evacuation flight. Her terminal was on the other side of the airport. She had four or five pieces of luggage that she couldn’t even push if she wanted to.

Again, who let this woman travel alone?!

I purposely tried to avoid eye contact. She obviously was lost and confused, and I obviously was tired and frustrated.

All of a sudden, NO ONE was around the airport. The baggage people, passengers, workers, stragglers, homeless people… no one was around to flag down and assist this lady.

She looked my way and asked, “Do you know where my flight is?”

Knowing she was part of the evacuation part, I replied, “It’s terminal E. Go in through those doors and take a left. Those workers can help you.”

She responded, “And who will help me with my bags?”

She paused, looked at my brother and said to him, “With God and your help, we can do it.”

My brother and I looked at each other like, “You have GOT to be kidding me!!!”

He paid for a trolley, helped load the luggage and began pushing the trolley to the other side of the airport.

Mind you, we’re going .00005 miles per hour. SO SLOW. But we tried to be as patient as possible as the woman made as much progress as she could with her cane.

After it took 15 minutes to enter the airport, my brother gave me the luggage trolley to push as he hunted down a wheelchair to expedite the process.

None were available.

In the meantime, the elderly woman and I crept along.

Since I figured it’d take 35 minutes to walk to a place that would usually take 7 minutes, I decided to spark up conversation.

She had four children (who apparently didn’t love her enough to see her through this international trip). She also loved living in Lagos and didn’t care for Abuja too much.

The woman asked me if she was holding me up from going to my flight.

“No, we’re trying to go to Nigeria too for my dad’s funeral, so we’re praying for a way to get there. We’re not going on the evacuation flight.”

The lady looked at me, took a breath and said that she was sorry. Then, she immediately started praying.

“May you enter the country in Jesus’ name (Amen.) May you receive traveling mercies in Jesus’ name. (Amen.) God will lead you all in your journey and cast out the plans of the devil in Jesus’ name. (Amen.)”

My Africans know that you’re trained to say “Amen” when you hear “in Jesus’ name.” LOL!

I figured that every bit of prayer helped, and I was actually appreciative that she took the time out to say one. 🙏🏾

Waiting on God

My brother and I dropped the lady off in the ridiculously long line for the evacuation flight to Nigeria. We met up with our sister, who was waiting for quite some time at the bus station, and proceeded to go to a hotel.

My other brother’s flight landed, and he met us at the hotel. We all had to regroup and rethink this through. It was July 31. The funeral was on Aug. 7. We still had time…right?

We prayed and researched and prayed and researched.

On a whim, my oldest brother decided to apply for an e-visa to a neighboring country since our expired Nigerian passports wouldn’t get us anywhere. He submitted the application, and less than two minutes later, he was approved.

The rest of us rushed to do the same. We were all approved! And the plan began to look for flights near Nigeria.

We saw that mostly every one of the flights was coming out of Newark. So, guess where we headed on Aug. 2? That’s right! New Joisey, baby!

We felt we were in the right position to go at a moment’s notice with all the proper documentation.

But Aug. 2 came and went. We kept praying. And then my mom, who was in Nigeria, would call one of us to check up on your progress.

“What are you guys doing? Stop roaming around the U.S. and go home! Just go home! I’ll be fine. You’re causing my mind to go up. Go home and help me stop worrying about you guys!”

“Ma, we’ll be there. We’ll be there. We’re still figuring things out, but we’ll be there.”

“Figuring what? HOW? Flights are closed. Go home!”

We spent hours trying to determine what we’d do after we landed near Nigeria. How in the world were we going to get to our final destination?

Aug. 3 flew by too. Umm.. Lord, we good?

Days were tough. We tried hard to encourage each other while blocking out all naysayers—we couldn’t even pick up for my mom anymore because she’d try to discourage us from coming.

Our minds were set. No matter how things looked, we kept our humor and often recited our new mantra: “We are outta hee-uhh!” (an ode to our New Jersey setting).

Aug. 4 was decision day. If we didn’t leave on that day with a solid plan, we’d basically miss the funeral. It was going to be livestreamed, but a whole me…watching my father’s funeral online? Habba!

We tried to get our minds off of the situation by playing on our phones or watching T.V. Then, a phone call from a relative came at around 3:30 p.m.

Because of our persistence, it encouraged groups of people—some we didn’t even know—to help us get to our final destination.

Everything after that was such a hurried blur. We rushed to book flights; and after a day and a half of travel, we arrived to surprise my mom the night before the funeral. (And we turned right back around to head back home four days later.)

Faith led us on this journey—one leg at a time.

It wasn’t always easy or comfortable, but we felt the hand of God every step of the way.

Our trip was so packed with stories that I haven’t even scratched the surface in this blog post. But guess what? That’s what this week’s video is for.

I’ll describe the reunion with my mom, give you a glimpse of the funeral and explain our long journey back. See you soon! ✌🏾