0:58
- travel
- October 9, 2019
Meet the 1st black woman to visit every country
Jessica Nabongo ended her journey in the Seychelles.
Friends and family joined her in the Seychelles to celebrate the incredible achievement.
When Nabongo spoke to \"GMA\" in March, she had visited 157 countries so far but travel has always been a part of her life, she told \"GMA.\"
Nabongo, who lives in Detroit, traveled to Canada when she was four and, by age 18, she had also been to Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, the United Kingdom and Uganda -- which is where her parents are from. In addition to her U.S. passport, Nabongo carries a Ugandan passport, which she said helped her gain access to nations that aren't amenable to American tourists.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jessica Nabongo ???????? (@thecatchmeifyoucan) on May 28, 2017 at 2:48am PDT
The idea to visit every country on earth came to her in February 2017. At that point, she had visited about 60 countries.
But Nabango didn't tell anyone her plan, at least not at first. Nabango did some research and discovered that she could become the first black woman to visit every country.
\"I didn't want anyone to beat me to it,\" she said.
She went public with her quest in March 2018.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jessica Nabongo ???????? (@thecatchmeifyoucan) on Mar 28, 2018 at 7:48pm PDT
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jessica Nabongo ???????? (@thecatchmeifyoucan) on Dec 25, 2018 at 9:35am PST
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jessica Nabongo ???????? (@thecatchmeifyoucan) on Sep 13, 2018 at 9:48pm PDT
Nabongo had been writing a travel blog since 2009, before social media was so prevalent, as \"a way to keep family and friends updated,\" she said. Today, she documents much of her travel on Instagram, where she has almost 90,000 followers.
She said she gets asked a lot about how she got started.
\"People look at a photo of me in Bali and they say, 'That's cool, I want to go to Bali.' But everyone needs to ask themselves, 'What is your why? Why do you want to do what it is you want to do?' I hope people would be more reflective than reactive. Not just like, 'Oh Bali, that's a cute picture, I want to go.'\"
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jessica Nabongo ???????? (@thecatchmeifyoucan) on Feb 17, 2017 at 2:33pm PST
What makes it to her Instagram, she said, is \"a fraction of my life. There's a lot of really s***** things that go on behind the scenes.\"
Nabongo recounted a visit to the Eastern European nation of Moldova -- one of the poorest countries in Europe -- and said she'll \"never go back there in my life.\" It wasn't just that she got ripped off when exchanging her money for the local currency, or that her taxi driver charged her double. She just found that the reception wasn't that friendly.
She's had things like that happen before. It was the general unfriendliness of the people she encountered.
\"I'm [a] seasoned traveler, used to being a foreigner and people taking advantage of me,\" she said. \"I don’t speak the language, I get it, especially in poor countries. In poor countries, I don't really even mind.\"
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Jessica Nabongo ???????? (@thecatchmeifyoucan) on Jun 14, 2018 at 11:33pm PDT
More often than not, though, people tried to be helpful, especially when Nabongo would tell them what she was trying to accomplish, she said.
She ended her quest on Oct. 6. The date is significant: it's her late father's birthday, and Nabongo said the journey was in his honor.
\"Had he not gotten a scholarship to Western Michigan,\" she said, \"none of this would be happening.\"
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