Tanisha Colon-Bibb all the time deliberate on spending her life in New York — till love introduced her midway throughout the globe.
The 33-year-old entrepreneur grew up in Harlem because the youngest of 4 kids. After graduating from Spelman College in 2010, she launched her first enterprise, Rebelle Agency, serving to shoppers in leisure, non-profit and different fields coordinate their advertising and promoting methods.
“I’ve really tried to work with talented people that want to use their voice for good,” Colon-Bibb tells CNBC Make It. “That’s led me to work with a lot of minority voices, whether it’s women, Black and Brown people or members of the LGBTQ community … it really brings me joy to help give a voice to marginalized people.”
In 2018, she launched her second enterprise, a expertise administration agency known as Rebelle Management. Running two companies, nonetheless, grew to become draining for Colon-Bibb and by the top of 2018, she says she felt “stuck” in New York. “I felt like all of my time and energy was spent toward building my business,” she notes. “I realized I wanted to experience new things and travel more.”
‘Love made me transfer to South Africa’
One journey to Cape Town would change her life. In November 2019, Colon-Bibb visited South Africa’s legislative capital for her pal’s wedding ceremony and met her boyfriend Malusi Siboto, a skilled cricket participant from Cape Town. “There were instant fireworks, it was love at first sight,” she remembers. They spent the subsequent few months touring all through Africa and Europe collectively earlier than the coronavirus pandemic hit.
Tanisha and her boyfriend Malusi Siboto
Photo: Walter Randlehoff
The pair navigated a long-distance relationship and a seven-hour time distinction for a number of months till worldwide border restrictions had been lifted in October 2020. Colon-Bibb moved to Johannesburg, the place Siboto lives, that month. “It wasn’t even a second thought for me to come here, live with him and build our relationship,” she says. “I would definitely say love made me move to South Africa.”
While a few of Colon-Bibb’s associates had been skeptical at first about her transferring in with a new boyfriend, they (alongside along with her dad and mom) have been supportive of her choice. “Most people are excited, but they also have a lot of questions, like ‘What are you doing there?’ and ‘How could you live in a completely different country?'” she says.
Getting a vacationer visa from South Africa
In fall 2020, vacationers from the United States had been nonetheless thought of high-risk for coronavirus transmission by the South African authorities, so Colon-Bibb could not fly instantly from New York to Johannesburg. She quarantined for 2 weeks in Ghana with a pal and flew to Johannesburg from there.
Colon-Bibb was granted a 90-day visa that was prolonged to September 2021 on account of rising coronavirus circumstances all through the continent and security considerations. She traveled to the United States to go to household and associates on the finish of the month and was granted a new 90-day visa so she may proceed to remain in Johannesburg after she returned.
While the 90-day vacationer visa has been a useful short-term answer for the preliminary transfer, Colon-Bibb says she’s contemplating functions for a enterprise or partnership visa with Siboto so she will be able to construct extra of a “permanent life” in South Africa.
How she spends her cash
Before her relocation Colon-Bibb says she usually felt like she was dwelling “paycheck to paycheck” in New York — however dwelling in Johannesburg has helped her save extra money and lift her credit score rating. “Anyone who lives in New York knows that anytime you step outside, you somehow end up spending at least $100,” Colon-Bibb says. “Moving to South Africa has given me much more financial freedom.”
In April she and Siboto moved into a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath house the place they break up the price of hire and utilities. Colon-Bibb pays about $979 in hire monthly, which is her largest expense. But she has saved cash by turning off cell service to her U.S. telephone quantity and switching to Wi-Fi calling, which prices her about $150 every month.
She additionally devotes a portion of her funds (about $565 every month) to self-care actions like nail and hair salon therapies. To assist with homesickness, Colon-Bibb spends $26 every month on a VPN service and Netflix subscription so she will be able to watch American TV exhibits like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Law &Order.”
While Colon-Bibb principally cooks her meals at house, she additionally likes to discover completely different eating places in and round Johannesburg every week with associates. “There’s such a lively energy in South Africa,” she says. “I really enjoy hopping between different bars and restaurants while I’m out and eating new foods.”
Other gadgets in Colon-Bibb’s funds embrace a recurring donation to her church in New York and funds towards her scholar loans, a private mortgage and previous utilities payments she’s persevering with to repay from her previous New York house.
Tanisha Colon-Bibb’s common month-to-month spending
Gene Woo Kim | CNBC Make It
Here’s a month-to-month breakdown of Colon-Bibb’s spending (as of August 2021):
Rent: $979
Self-Care: $565
Entertainment: $300
Utilities: $256
Phone Bill: $150
Debt Repayment: $93
Food: $85
Transportation (Ubers, different rideshare companies): $80
Donations: $60
Subscriptions: $65
Total: $2,633
Building a new life overseas
When Colon-Bibb first moved to Johannesburg, a lot of her shoppers thought she was simply taking a trip. “They didn’t realize it was a permanent move! It was definitely an adjustment for all of us,” she says.
Each morning she wakes up at 5:00 a.m., completes a morning prayer meditation and runs two miles round her neighborhood. Next is breakfast and occasional — a “non-negotiable” a part of her routine, she provides — earlier than logging on to work from her house workplace or a native espresso store. She normally takes a break at 5:00 p.m. to eat dinner and watch a TV present, then works till 8:00 p.m. if she must have video conferences with shoppers in the United States.
Moving her enterprise from the United States to South Africa has been a comparatively easy course of in the course of the pandemic, she notes, as a result of a lot extra folks have turn out to be open to distant work and having conferences over video.
Tanisha Colon-Bibb
Photo: Walter Randlehoff
South African officers raised the alarm final week on a new variant of the virus, omicron, however the discovery hasn’t modified any a part of Colon-Bibb’s routine. She avoids crowded locations and tries to spend time with associates outdoor as a lot as she will be able to. Johannesburg continues to function on a degree one lockdown, which mandates face masks in public locations and has a curfew in place from 12:00 a.m. till 4:00 a.m. “Nothing has really changed at all, the variant isn’t very scary to me,” she provides.
Colon-Bibb met most of her associates via Siboto and certainly one of her school associates, who moved to Johannesburg proper earlier than the pandemic. When she’s not exploring new eating places or reside music venues, she’s been studying how you can prepare dinner conventional dishes like Vetkoek, a fried bread stuffed with curried mince, or watching previous South African movies with Siboto. “I am completely fascinated by his culture, and he does a really great job of explaining different ceremonies and traditions so I can get a better sense of the country,” she says.
Her favourite a part of dwelling in Johannesburg is town’s pure environment and wildlife. “I’m from the concrete jungle, but it is so refreshing to be able to go hiking by the beach or mountains and be among animals,” Colon-Bibb says. “The first time I saw a zebra, I freaked out because I’d never been that close to an animal outside of the zoo my entire life.”
The entrepreneur calls herself a “global citizen” and imagines a future the place each South Africa and New York are her house bases. 14 months in the past, Colon-Bibb moved to South Africa for love, not anticipating to fall in love with the continent, too. “As a Black woman, being in South Africa has allowed me to grow emotionally and spiritually, because I feel connected to my ancestors in a way I didn’t feel in New York,” she says. “Being here with Malusi, too, has made me more patient, interested to learn more people’s stories and see the world, so I am really, really grateful for that.”
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