I made it to Nigeria! It was no small feat. The adventure began the day before I was supposed to leave when I badly chipped my front tooth on a hard cracker. Thank you to Dr. Gregory Mark and his team for seeing me late on a Friday afternoon and fixing me up. I left the next morning for JFK only to find out that Nigeria's Arik Airlines had suddenly canceled my flight. The next flight would "probably" be Monday, which would mean me missing my presentation for the Reading Association of Nigeria.

After so much planning and preparation, this was hard to bear, so I walked over to the Delta desk and found a flight to Lagos via Atlanta. Twenty-eight hours later, and here I am. The revised schedule means that I am staying overnight in Lagos at a simple but clean airport hotel called De Skyline.

Tomorrow at 5:45 am I will walk over to the domestic airport and try again with Arik Air for a regional flight to Nsukka. There I will finally meet up with Professor Obiajulu Emejulu, who teaches at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri. Obi has been the guiding force behind bringing the Comic Book Project to Nigeria. He was heartbroken when I first called him about the canceled flight, but he was elated to find out that I would make it for the speech and workshops after all.

He called me an honorary Naija (native Nigerian) for my fortitude, which made me proud to be on this journey. Here I come, Nsukka!