This Solo Travel Skill Saved My Family Trip to Nigeria

I was standing in the corner of Edinburgh airport with two suitcases, a backpack, a side bag, and no visa, making call after call that went nowhere. The plan had been for my whole family to fly to Lagos together for my stepmother's 61st birthday. I had to let go of that plan at eight in the morning and what actually got me through the experience wasn't the thing I expected.

In this episode:

• Checking the visa portal all night
•  Alone at the Edinburgh check-in
• The woman without the visa
• Trying to switch to Ghana instead
• Buying two new tickets
• Six hours in the airport lounge
• Landing in Lagos

This episode is for you if:

• You've had travel plans nearly fall apart the night before you were supposed to leave
• You're a woman over 40 traveling with family and still figuring out how much of the decision-making is yours
• You've assumed a plan would hold and didn't check it until it was almost too late
• You're a solo female traveler who wants to hear what actually gets you through a travel disaster, not the highlight reel

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Imagine you've decided on the trip you're stalked and then something happens. A visa doesn't come through, a flight gets cancelled, the person you were going with backs out. And just like that, the excitement is gone and you're technically still going, but you don't feel like it anymore. This is what we're exploring today. Most women think solo travel is about being brave or fearless, but it's really about letting go of the expectations holding you in place. This show is about what changes when you stop waiting and take yourself seriously, starting with intentional travel. I'm Dami Ann and this is Freedom Looks Like This. Let's get started. In July, my family got together in Edinburgh. Parents from Canada, a sister from Canada, and a sister came from Paris. My younger sister was graduating from law school there, and from Edinburgh, the plan was for us to all fly together to Lagos. Our reason for going to Lagos was twofold. One, we wanted to explore our history because doing our ancestry showed that we were part Igbo. And the other reason was because my stepmother wanted to celebrate her 61st birthday there. She has a brother who lives there, and so we're going to get together with his family and have a big celebration. This celebration was actually supposed to happen when she turned 60, but one of my sisters got married then, so we pushed it. I've been to Africa before, I lived in Sudan, I've visited quite a few countries, but this was the first time that anyone else in my family was visiting Africa. So for me, it was also interesting to see how they experience Africa. It's no surprise, of course, that we were passed to Nigerian and Ghanaian because of the slave trade. And once my stepmother found out about some of her ancestry, she was really keen to go to Africa. So this trip was really inspired by her. Now for me, this was also another first. It was the first time that I was going on a family trip with the rest of them. They traveled together before, but not me. I'd flown to that side of the world, to Africa, many times that would need more than my fingers to count. Now all of us have dual citizenship, St. Lucian and Canadian, and everyone else applied for their visa on their Canadian passport. I used my St. Lucian passport because I was also headed to a few other countries after the trip. And using my St. Lucia passport meant that I could skip the visa fees and even have easier processes along the way. My family had their visas back in 48 hours, even with some back and forth with immigration. I applied for my visa later because I needed to renew my passport first. But because they got there so quickly and even they got it outside of business hours, I thought, oh, this should be fine. Well, I applied for mine with 72 hours. Normally I would try to apply for my visa much earlier, but this was the fastest that I could get the passport back. So I applied for the visa and mine sat on the review. First, I got a response that I needed to re-upload my flight information and my stay information, my accommodations. And I did that pretty much within an hour or two of receiving the request. I also sent it my email. And I thought that was a good sign because it was clearly on somebody's desk. They had already reviewed it, so I expected that to be pretty quick. But my request started on the review. I contacted the office and they told me that it was being processed. And in the meantime, the clock kept running for me to actually leave Edinburgh. So at the family dinner the last night I decided that if I can't go to Nigeria, then I can go to Accra. And what I could have done at that point was change my flight to Accra. But I didn't know all of the things then that I found out later. I thought that I could make changes once I had more information. The only problem with that was that the flight was about 8.25 in the morning. I thought, oh, there'll be a ticket office. I'll go early to the airport and I will talk to the ticket office if I have any problems. So in the morning I wake up early, around 4, and I check the portal one last time for Nigeria, and nothing had changed. Now, one detail I missed is that I had tried to contact some numbers from the government website to figure out what was happening with the visa. And one of the numbers that I contacted, I don't even know where I got it actually, they advised me that I could pay and get the visa. But I didn't understand why I needed to pay, and the guy was not really clear on what I had to pay. So I let that one go. Now I know a country doesn't have to give me a visa, right? Countries run their consular services however they want. But what I was kind of annoyed about was the communication process because there was a Moreland portal, but it didn't give any updates. And there were numbers to contact and emails to contact if you needed information along the way. And there was just silence. And I was really thinking, maybe I should just let this one go. Especially when I was asked to pay money to get the visa. I thought that maybe it was part of the system. And I lost my excitement for the trip. I thought, oh no, this is the stereotype coming true for me. What would it actually be like to be in the place? I'm not proud of this, but this is what went through my head. At the same time, I had already committed to this trip. And I was a bit sour about it. And some part of me was waiting to feel differently to get that excitement again. And it took a long time to come. It definitely did not come while I was running around Edinburgh Airport trying to find a ticket office that did not exist, trying to reach British Airways, which was not open until 8 a.m. By then it would be way too late to make my flight. And so I just watched all of my plans and my backup plans crumble. Have you ever had an experience like this? Not necessarily a visa, but maybe your flight got cancelled or your partner backed out. Or maybe the cost of the trip kept creeping up until you started thinking, oh my goodness, this whole thing is too much. And when the circumstances change, we usually have different thoughts about them. And that brings up different feelings for us. So my thoughts was maybe this is not meant to be. Maybe this place is not gonna be very welcoming for me. And of course that diminished my excitement. And being in that space of not being excited anymore, but also feeling some obligation, feeling like I had made some commitments. That's not a very comfortable place to sit. And one of the things that happens there is to fall into waiting. To fall into waiting for permission to decide what to do rather than making a decision. A lot of the time people ask me, Oh, are you excited about the trip? And I usually am excited, but I'm usually also busy. And I say, Oh, I know that the excitement will come. I know that the excitement will be there when I'm actually on the trip. It's the same thing that I believe about exercise. There are plenty of mornings that I don't feel like working out. Nothing in my body actively is saying, yes, let's do this. And if I waited to feel excited, I'd never go. But I go anywhere because I know the goal and I know the feeling that I'm going to get during it and right after it. So even though I can't feel it yet, that excitement, that sense of accomplishment, I know that it's waiting for me and it needs to be on the other side after I've already done the action. So the key there is that mindset is what's doing the work, not motivation. Motivation is a feeling, and feelings are often unreliable messages, especially when things are hard. But mindset is a decision you make ahead of time about who you're going to be when the feeling doesn't show up. So for me, when the resistance shows up, I try to tap into the feeling that I'm going to have later. Not the one I'm having now, but the one that I know is waiting for me. I try to think, I want that. And I need to do what it takes to get there. That's what I told myself going into that last night in Edinburgh. What got me through Edinburgh wasn't pushing past the feeling. It was realizing sometime around 4 a.m. in the morning that the plan I'd been operating on didn't match what was actually true anymore. And having to let go of it and build a new one without much warning can be very challenging. So the night before at my sister's graduation dinner, changing my flight to Accra was a real option when I said that's what I would do. I didn't take that option because I assumed I'd have more room to work with in the morning. I thought there'd be a ticket office at the airport or I could pick up the phone and talk to somebody. I thought that I had more time than I actually had. And I was optimistic about conditions that turned out not to be true. There's actually a name for that: optimism bias. It's a well-documented tendency to expect things to work out in our favor, even before we have any real evidence that they will. It's not the same as naivety because it's built into how we process the future. And it's exactly why I didn't change the flight the night before when I still could have. So by the time I checked the portal at 4 a.m. and then got to the airport about an hour and a half later, the choices I had the night before were no longer available. There was no ticket desk for British Airways at Edinburgh. And when I tried to call British Airways or use their live chat, none of these options were available to me. The office was still closed. When I finally reached someone minutes before eight, they couldn't hear me. And then it was too late anyway. So I hadn't hesitated out of fear, but I had made some assumptions that turned out to be wrong. This happens on pretty much every trip, honestly, and often with smaller stakes. You expect to understand how things work, you get there, and it's not quite what you were expecting. So you book the version of the trip that you expect, and then the world hands you something completely different. Maybe the road is closed. One time in India, the telephone booths were closed because there was a strike. Or you arrived somewhere and your booking wasn't confirmed, or you forgot to book it. Maybe you were supposed to meet somebody and they cancel. You don't just tough it out in these moments until the original plan starts working again. What's helpful is to notice as fast as you can that the plan in your head doesn't match what's true anymore. And then be willing to let it go and build a new plan. Or just be in the moment and let the opportunities evolve. I know that can be really hard because some of us like certainty, and we often have less time and less certainty than we want when situations are changing. So by the time I actually got to the departure hall in Edinburgh, I'd already been wrong once. And what I didn't know at that point, but I learned was that I could be wrong many more times and I would need to adjust things before the day was over. I was doubtful the day before about the visa. We were all celebrating my sister's graduation, and I was also checking the portal, checking my email. I checked it on the way to the hotel. I checked it when brushing my teeth. I checked it again before bed. In the middle of the night when I woke up. And of course, first thing when my alarm went off in the morning. My family knew what was happening the whole time, and they kept reassuring me, you'll get the visa, it's gonna be fine. And I tend to be much more of a realist than an optimist, but I was optimistic this time. But I also, there was a part of me that was also worried. What if things don't work? And that's kind of a strange place to be because there's that tension. So I stood in the corner of the airport, right beside the British Airways line, with my two suitcases to check in, a backpack, a sideback. I already said before that I don't travel light. But here I was with all of this stuff, feeling a bit frantic and making call after call in every British Airways location that I could find a number for. And all of them were in vain. About 10 minutes to eight, I finally got through to somebody and I could hear them perfectly. But they couldn't hear me. I was so frustrated. Especially when I called that number again and I was still no one was available. Live chat was down too. Remember, there's no British Away's desk at Edinburgh Airport. And the phone was the only option. The one thing I actually remember from that time wasn't the sound or smell, but I remember how disinterested the two agents were that I eventually talked to. I felt embarrassed. I felt humiliated. I felt like I'd done something wrong. Like people were watching me sideways as what's wrong with her? Like a criminal or something. I tried to see if I could change my ticket to fly straight to Ghana instead, since I already had an ETA for Ghana. But there was a problem because I would have to pick up luggage in Lagos and I couldn't do that without a visa. So every option I tried, the door would close. And I was feeling tense. I was a bit stressed out about the situation. And when stress happens, that really narrows your field of vision. I was so consumed with trying to solve the problem that everything else was background noise. And I don't know where my family were. I don't know if they'd already gone through security. That's what I assumed at the time, because I was standing right beside the British Airways line, but I didn't see them come through. When one of my sisters finally reached me to ask where I was, I assumed that they had gone through security. They assumed that I was still at my hotel. I had sent out messages to family members instead of the group chat, and I didn't get any reply. And so I still don't know. Did they come to check in while I was on the phone and I didn't notice? Or were they really through already? I think either of those things could really be true because again, when you're stressed, your field of vision narrows. But the thing that really stays with me about that experience is that when I went to the check-in desk a second time to ask if I could just go to London, the woman managing the line said to one of her colleagues, the woman without the visa is back. There was no softness, there was no empathy anywhere in that sentence. Not in the way she looked, not in the way she spoke. For a while there, I was ready to wash my hand over the whole trip to Nigeria. But I didn't stay with that feeling of frustration and humiliation and embarrassment. Even though it was 8 a.m. and I felt flat, even though I didn't know what to do next, I was still hoping to salvage my original ticket rather than buy a new one. But because I had used miles for part of the ticket, it had more restrictions. So eventually I gave up and I realized, okay, this is not happening. It took me a while to get there, but I did get there. And I got a new ticket to London using miles, and I booked a flight to Accra with Royal Air Moroc. The reason I did that was because the flight would be more than 24 hours later. And so if the Nigeria visa came through within the next, I don't know, 12 hours or so, then I would be able to change the ticket free of charge and go to Lagos instead. So since arriving at the airport at 5:45 in the morning, I just stayed at the airport. I checked my bags in and went into the lounge, and I spent about six hours there. Looking back, even with all of the upset and sourness, I was still committed to going. I had purpose for this trip. I was looking at history. There was also family connection. So when I was in the lounge and thinking about what's next, what I was really doing was protecting the flexibility. I wasn't trying to push through a feeling, but I wanted to be adaptable and flexible enough to be able to stick to the purpose of this trip. I checked in again at the 24-hour. Still nothing. And it just felt like there were all of these roadblocks that kept coming up. Because at one point my application actually disappeared from the portal entirely. I was actually resigned to it. I remember thinking, this is clearly the trip that is going to test me. Stay mean, roll with the punches. I didn't contact anyone after that point. My uncle in Nigeria was checking on the situation on his end. And so I decided to just wait and be still and see what happened. He actually found out that the officer who was working on my visa had been out of the office the day before, and that was what caused the delay. So he told me that I would get the visa, but I just needed to wait. So finally, the visa email came about 652 that evening on the 9th, about 10 and a half hours after my original flight had left without me. And then the actual flight to Lagos through Casablanca on Royal Air Maroc wasn't until 4.50 the next afternoon. What I'd done was I'd actually bought two tickets. I bought a ticket from London to Casablanca, and then another ticket from Casablanca to Accra. So the Casablanca to Accra ticket was still more than 24 hours away, and I was able to change that to be from Casablanca to Lagos. And I was wondering how much did my uncle contribute towards me getting this visa? So I was thinking, here we go. I guess this is finally happening. As long as I make the party. That's what counts. So even though I was still sour, walking onto the flight, and the whole way there, I thought, okay, I'm gonna be there for the party, and that is what matters. I'm gonna be there for the history, and that I am very interested in. After everything, going through Casablanca, entry into Morocco, entry into Nigeria was so easy. It was like, okay, you've already done the hard work to get there. Even while I was waiting for my uncle to pick me up, no one bothered me. I must have been giving off sour vibes. I got a couple of taxi offers and then nothing. People just left me alone. Standing there in Lagos, having actually made it, I don't think what got me through that whole stretch was bravery. It was thinking about what was going on and updating over and over again. So every time my plan stopped matching what was true, I needed to make an update. Psychologists call this cognitive flexibility. That's the ability to let go of a plan the moment it stops matching reality and build a new one instead of staying anchored to what you expected. That's the skill this whole trip kept asking of me over and over again. I don't think I quite understood until I was standing in the terminal how much more complicated it can get when there are other people involved. So this time it wasn't just about my plan falling apart. This time it was about my stepmother's 61st birthday, the first trip with my whole family, the first trip that my family had taken to West Africa, the first trip I taken to Africa since I found out about my heritage. Rethinking a plan when it's just you is a different kind of hard. But when there are people watching, when there are people waiting, and their plans are also tangled up in yours, it's a very different kind of hard. And I want to point this out because if you've been on a trip with people and adapting has been a little bit more complicated, that doesn't mean that you're bad at adapting. It might just mean that the stakes were a bit higher. Now, the reason I kept adjusting, kept building new plans out wasn't just because I'm committed to flexibility. That's true, but it was also thinking about the party and the trip and my family. I wanted to be there with them. So although I want to travel and explore things on my own terms, part of what I also want is connection, connection with the people that are important to me. So those two things are not in competition. If it had just been me going to Nigeria alone with no family trip attached, I probably would have let it go the moment the ticket office turned out not to exist. And I would have just flown straight to Ghana instead. What pulled me towards Ghana was the history. I'd heard about the Ashanti, but I didn't know much. I think that they were quite heavily involved in the slave trade themselves. I like learning about history on the ground, in the actual place, not just from a book. So if I'd gone straight to Ghana, I would have had time to go to Kumasi and I would have spent another day in Cape Coast. And I wouldn't have had to rush Accra the way that I did. I never even made it to the market there. But I don't really feel any regret about this because sometimes when you're traveling you have to make trade-offs. And I can always go back. I got to choose what mattered to me to keep rebuilding the plan for that. The decision was still mine, but there were other factors for me to consider. And that's life, isn't it? Most real decisions aren't one clean thing pulling against nothing. They're your own preferences on one side and something you care about just as much on the other. And you get to decide every time which one moves first. That's still a decision. It doesn't stop being yours just because it isn't simple. So what actually belongs to you? The trip or the plan? Or the assumption you're still operating on that you haven't actually checked lately? If you're in a version of this right now, where something is not quite working out the way you expected, where it's a bit harder than you anticipated, ask yourself, what am I still planning around that might not actually be true anymore? Somewhere in whatever you're navigating right now, there's probably an assumption that you made sometime back that you haven't checked lately. It could be a price or a timeline, it could be somebody else's plans, or it could be a condition you're assuming will hold. Check it. If it's still true, then good, you've lost nothing. But if it's no longer true, you'll know while you've still got room to build something else. And if you're lucky, you're going to do that with less than cost than I had when I was standing in Edinburgh Airport in the morning with no ticket office and no time left. And I talked about being sour. When I was leaving Edinburgh and until I got to Nigeria, it didn't just vanish the second that I got on the flight. It faded much more slowly. It faded on its own schedule. And for today, this is where it stops. It's not about resolution, but it's about adaptability and adjustment. What I remind myself of is to come back to myself and remember that I'm choosing the life that I want. How flexible are you? Let's make it even more concrete. Think about the last time you had a plan and it didn't work out the way that you expected. How did you react? How did you adjust? And how do you want to behave next time? For this week, your invitation is for you to notice every moment you catch yourself assuming a plan will hold without actually checking it. You don't have to fix all the plans. You don't even have to act on what you notice. Just start noticing where you're making plans and what happens when things don't work out quite the way you expect. In the next episode, I'll tell you what happened once I actually landed in Lagos and about the one thing that stayed true, even with my whole family around me the entire trip. It really stood out to me how much I've built my capacity from taking solo trips. But we'll get into that next time. Thank you for spending this time with me. If something in this episode resonated, choose one small action and try it in whatever way feels doable for you. And if you want the simplest place to start, you can join my school community to build a bit of momentum. The link is in the show notes.