How the days of Susan Hall an American citizen got dark when she was trying to carry out an adoption program of a Uganda child called Emmanuel back in the year 2012. Susan Hall jetted in Uganda in 2012 after being connected by a friend to the family that needed Emmanuel’s adoption.
Below is what she confessed to the public a couple of weeks back;
“Time came when we had to find somewhere else in the world – a third country which can allow Emmanuel and I to live together for two years until we can reapply for Emmanuel’s U.S. Visa. Obviously, this constituted an enormous hardship, as I had zero funds for setting up life in another country.
Some of you may wonder how I found Emmanuel, here is how I came to know him; I came to know him in early June, 2012, when a friend who knew I was in my last fertility attempted to ask one of her friends, Laura king if she knew how I could adopt internationally, and affordably, since she knew Laura’s sister.
Bonnie King was living in Uganda and had adopted here affordably. Laura reported that Bonnie was fostering a 9 month old baby, Emmanuel Niwamanya, and she was looking for an adoptive family for him. Bonnie and I exchanged emails that evening and within two days I determined that Emmanuel and I were a good fit. I began the home study process in the US and bonnie retained the services of Peter Nyombi, an adoption attorney (and attorney general in Kampala) on my behalf; and this is how Emmanuel came to be relinquished: his parents, Stella Alupot and Francis khwesiga (married) are HIV positive and live in a dire poverty; Francis unemployed and Stella a tea girl who made roughly 150,000 shillings per month.
They had four children already, one was 14, 12, a 1 year and a newborn. When the doctor failed to cauterize appropriately, after Stella’s having a bilateral tubal ligation, Stella became pregnant with her fifth child, Emmanuel, who is this year two years younger than the fourth baby. Bonnie king, who was a public health worker with Johns Hopkins University and a longtime friend of Stella’s, urged Stella to give the new baby up for adoption and took Stella and Francis to visit an orphanage and to meet with an adoption attorney to learn more about the process.
Stella says she knew throughout the pregnancy that she wouldn’t raise the child. When it was determined that Emmanuel was to be adopted, they asked bonnie if she would find the family that would take him and give him a better life; he then remained in their care as bonnie searched for an adoptive family. Unfortunately in May, Francis’s father died.
Francis and his wife Stella had to leave for western Uganda for a week for the funeral; leaving the five kids in the care of Stella’s 16 year old sister. Bonnie stepped in and said she would take Emmanuel, who was sick and on an IV, saying she would foster him until she could find an adoptive family to take him. Bonnie and I were connected the following month, and that is when my adoption efforts kicked off.
I arrived in Kampala on July 19 2012, and what surprised me were the US immigration law and its visa problems. According to the foreign affairs manual (particularly 9 FAM 42.21 N13.2-5- Orphan with no parents), stated that “Emmanuel is not eligible for a US visa because he is not a true orphan; both of his parents are living, and they did not abandon or desert him by legal definition.” When time passed, I talked to my Ugandan attorney for his assistance of setting up an incorporated business here in Kampala and it was successful, the purpose of gaining a work permit was to be here legally because I had already exhausted my visitor visas and was thus here illegally beginning December 18, 2012.
I named the business Susan Hall Seminars, Ltd. After my business was incorporated, my attorney assured me that the work permit was in process and that penalties were not to accrue against me; and within some little time to come I will be the mother of the baby boy. So it’s high time for I to let you know that Emmanuel has a Ugandan passport and is not HIV positive as it was thought; may glory be to God.” The glamorous lady confessed.
