Help Us Keep Our Son

I'm an American teacher teaching and living in Uganda with my husband and two daughters.  We’ve been caring for our  foster son, George (A.K.A Hanuman - our nickname for him) for over 2 months. He's a totally orphaned 3-year-old boy who, when he came to live with us, had malaria, kwashiorkor (protein-deficiency bloated belly), jiggers living in his toes, no immunizations, brown teeth with bleeding gums, and a major infestation of intestinal worms. He has since been medically treated and has blossomed into an active, energetic, curious, playful, loving little boy who is wholly attached to us by now, as we are to him.

The last thing I wanted to do was appeal for help, but we are up against a wall. There have been some unexpected twists and turns on this journey we’ve started towards adoption, yet there’s no turning back for us now.  From what we initially learned about privately adopting in Uganda, we could foster for 3 years, then apply for adoption through the Ugandan courts and be done, all for very little money. We thought, “3 years will be no problem.” But now we've been living in Uganda for almost a year and we are not even officially fostering yet - our court date has yet to be set. At this rate and with having to work around my school-year schedule, we could end up needing to stay here 5 or 6 years, not 3. Furthermore we’ve already accumulated a sizable debt in the short time we’ve been here, just from living as frugally as we can. This got us thinking that maybe we should rethink our plan because this “cheap” route we chose to adoption may end up being the more expensive one in the long-run. Of course we can’t consider just giving Hanuman back, but there is another route to adoption that is much quicker, but costs a lot more up front (but it still costs very little compared to the tens of thousands needed for a non-private adoption through a US adoption agency). And it’s a good thing I started looking into this when I did because as it turns out a new US law will be passed next summer outlawing all private adoptions! So we now HAVE to go this quicker, but spendier route to adoption which requires us to get a homestudy done by a US adoption agency, but the rest we can do ourselves (as long as it is before next summer). So, if you are at all able, PLEASE help us raise the funds to get a homestudy done (homestudy $3000 + airfare for social worker + $800 application fee with US immigration = about $5000). Thank you SOOOO much!!!