Dr. Elaine Morgan planned to be in Haiti Sunday to bring her 4-year-old adoptive daughter, who is HIV-positive, back home to Skokie for the first time.
Instead, the single mother of five finds herself stuck in an agonizing limbo, frantically trying to help the girl, who survived the massive earthquake, but unable to reach her as food, water and medications begin to run out.
“I remember preparing to go last week and saying, ‘OK, nothing can stop this unless the sky falls down,” said Morgan, 63, a pediatric oncologist at Children’s Memorial Hospital, who has been trying to adopt the girl, Djoude, for more than two years.
“Now there is just frustration, fear and depression,” she said.
Morgan, who watched Djoude take her first steps about 13 months ago, finally completed the adoption process this month after the U.S. ban on HIV-positive Immigration was lifted and travel documents were finalized.
Since Tuesday’s earthquake, Morgan has tried desperately to find a way to get Djoude out of Haiti. But all the calls and e-mails have not been able to overcome the stark reality that rescuing the girl would require an hours-long drive from a mountaintop orphanage through treacherous, narrow roads surrounding Port-au-Prince. And even then, Djoude’s visa lies somewhere beneath piles of debris in the devastated city.
“I am sorry I just didn’t take a flight down earlier,” Morgan said. “How we are going to get these kids out of there is mind-boggling.”Morgan is one of hundreds of Americans in various stages of adoption who now find themselves in turmoil, calling aid organizations, lawmakers and even private evacuation companies in attempts to retrieve children they already consider their own.
They recognize that there are massive and urgent relief efforts taking place in Haiti, where tens of thousands of people have died and thousands more lie beneath rubble. The Haitian government has been crippled, and its officials can hardly be focused on foreign adoption matters.
Though the State Department has indicated it will expedite certain adoptions, these families worry that the paperwork that took months — and sometimes years — to finalize might be buried under mounds of concrete, possibly impeding the adoption process.
“It is nauseating,” said Lisa Gregg, of Chicago, who also had planned to be in Haiti this weekend, visiting a 3-year-old boy she hopes to adopt as her son. Gregg, who held the boy, Nelson, in her arms on a visit to Haiti in December, was waiting for the Haitian government to process her paperwork when the earthquake hit.
The State Department estimates there are at least 300 Haitian cases involving U.S. citizens at different stages of progress, while adoption advocates say some 900 are in the works. Many of the families were readying their homes in preparation, said Heather Breems, Haiti coordinator and international supervisor for Adoption-Link in Oak Park.
“The unique thing about Haiti adoptions is that the families are matched with the children at the beginning of the process, so it makes it difficult in times like these, when they feel that the children belong to them emotionally, but legally and logistically, it is much more complicated,” Breems said.
On Friday, the State Department announced that it is working with other agencies to speed pending cases where the Haitian government has already issued a final adoption decree or granted custody to U.S. parents. But no final decisions have been made.
“We regret that visa processing at the embassy, including immigrant visas for adopted children, is closed until further notice, and we cannot predict when we will be able to resume processing,” agency spokesman Noel Clay said. Mary Robinson, president and chief executive officer of the National Council For Adoption, cautioned that any intervention by parents could impair search-and-rescue missions.
“I think it is wonderful that people want to jump to the rescue, but I think there is a danger there,” Robinson said. “The first phase has to be relief, the second has to be putting infrastructure in place, and then dealing with adoptions.”
But the families fear the delay could put their children at greater risk. Djoude’s orphanage recently informed families that their food and water would run out by Wednesday and that many employees already had left to care for their own families. Morgan said that she worries Djoude’s HIV medication, which she has to take twice daily to suppress the deadly virus, will soon run out.
“It just eats you up, it eats you up,” Morgan said. “You just hang onto the hope that a miracle will happen because all the rational thinking of what will come down doesn’t get you anywhere. So you just hope for that miracle, but every day that goes by is one less day for that to happen.”
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