Learning How To Love Again

Most 58 year-old American women are starting to think about retiring. They’re taking advantage of their AARP memberships, joining bridge groups and enjoying the fact that their children are fully independent. Most of all, they’re happy that their grandchildren only come for visits, not indefinitely.

Donna Denelli-Hess is not like most women.

At 58 and a widow, Donna is adopting a 10 year-old HIV-positive boy from Kenya.


But Donna didn’t always think she would be learning about cowboys and Indians at her age. She and her husband, John, were never able to have their own children. They thought about adopting but once Donna completed graduate school and they finished doing certain things they wanted to do with each other, adoption just never happened. Since John was 20 years older than Donna, they had planned to retire in the Southwest where they owned property.


All that changed during Christmas 1999 when John suddenly died. Donna was devastated, empty and lost. She thought she would never be able to love again.

A few years later, Donna decided to take a vacation in 2004 to Kenya with her best friend, Deb. Donna, who is a health educator at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, visited a Williams student who was originally from Kenya. During her six-week vacation, Donna visited the Nyumbani Children’s Home, which is an orphanage for about 100 HIV-positive children. She was only at the orphanage for a few hours but while she was visiting the schoolhouse, she noticed a little boy standing off in the corner not engaged with the rest of his peers. Donna was told that this little boy, Bernard, was one of the sickest children at Nyumbani at the time. For one reason or another, the image of Bernard stuck with Donna until she decided to return the following year to volunteer.


Donna said she came back to Kenya in the summer of 2005 not looking to adopt but rather to do a good deed and give back to the world by volunteering. Donna decided that for 50 years, she had all she needed and wanted, but now it was time to stop being selfish. Now, it was time to be about somebody else.

When Donna arrived at Nyumbani, she was relieved to learn that Bernard was still alive. Nyumbani assigned the widow to volunteer in Bernard’s cottage, and as the weeks went on, Donna and Bernard began gravitating towards one another. They did homework together, played together and went on fieldtrips together. Donna said at that point, Bernard needed her as much as she needed him.

After a few weeks of volunteering, Donna said she just knew that Bernard was going to be in her life somehow. But she had no sense that it would be more than her financially supporting him and coming back year after year to volunteer and spend time with him because she hadn’t realized at the time that adoption at Nyumbani of a HIV-positive child was at all possible. Up until then, no HIV-positive child had ever been adopted out of Nyumbani. Only children who eventually tested HIV-negative at two years old once their mother’s antibodies were out of their system were adopted. But usually people don’t chose to adopt HIV-positive children to begin with. If a potential parent has the option of a healthy child and a HIV-positive child and they don’t have a prior relationship to any child, they’re probably going to choose the healthy child.


In 2005, private adoptions were still possible in Kenya so when Donna returned to the U.S. she began the private adoption process. But the laws later changed in Kenya making private adoptions no longer possible. However, Donna was unaware that the laws changed and ended up wasting time on a useless private adoption before having to start all over again with a public adoption.

She returned to Nyumbani the following summer on a professional development leave for four months to volunteer. After learning about the new, extensive, lengthy process of adoption in Kenya, Donna returned again in December 2006 to begin the procedure. She also began talking to Bernard, who was seven at the time, about the possibility of adoption. Bernard told Donna that he wanted to be her son and come to the U.S.

Bernard first came to Nyumbani when he was three from Naivasha. His mother died when he was two from complications of AIDS. He was left with his grandmother, who took care of him as long as she could before bringing him to Nyumbani.

Donna traveled to Naivasha to meet Bernard’s grandmother because she wanted to know that she would have his grandmother’s permission before she started the adoption process. Bernard’s grandmother could not understand why Donna would want this burden or why she chose Bernard when there were much cuter kids at Nyumbani than Bernard. Donna explained to her that having Bernard be her son would not be a burden. It would be a gift.


To say that the adoption process is complicated is an understatement. First, Donna had to find a Kenyan adoption agency that would accept her as a client. Her age and her current marital status were seen as red flags. She also had to find a U.S. agency that was licensed to conduct Kenyan adoptions and when she began the process, there was only one licensed agency in the states. Little Angels, the Kenyan agency that accepted her as a client, required her to provide them with financial documents, insurance documents, reference letters, pictures of her house back in Williamstown, MA, health documents and a letter from Nyumbani confirming they thought she would make a good parent for Bernard.

Next, the Kenyan adoption agency represented Donna at the National Adoption Committee, which is the first deciding body on whether or not you’ll be able to adopt in Kenya. The committee approved Donna and told her she could begin a three-month fostering period with Bernard in Kenya in August 2007. Little Angels, Donna’s Kenya adoption agency, had to approve the house where Bernard and Donna live and send social workers once a month to visit the pair. Donna just recently finished the fostering period and is now awaiting a court date where the court will appoint a court appointed guardian who will only look out for Bernard’s best interest as well as a representative from Kenya’s Child Services to conduct further interviews with Donna and Bernard. Once Child Services interviews and approves the adoption, Donna will have a second court date where if all goes well she will be given the official adoption document and be allowed to leave for the states.


But it won’t be over then. Before they can go to the states, Bernard has to apply for a U.S. visa, which will take 3-6 weeks. And the U.S. embassy has already told Donna that he will be denied the visa at first based on his HIV-positive status. Donna will then have to appeal the denial, which will take another 6 weeks, requesting a waiver for his HIV status. She’ll be required to prove that her medical insurance will be able to pay for his medical expenses, that he’s already been accepted as a patient at her town’s pediatric infectious disease clinic, that she’s notified the public health administrator for the state of Massachusetts and for her town. All of this information will be sent to Atlanta to the Centers for Disease Control where it will be decided if Bernard will be granted a waiver. If he’s granted the waiver, he’ll be given a U.S. visa and allowed to leave Kenya.

But then it’s still not over. Donna will then have to readopt Bernard in the U.S. so he can have U.S. citizenship. This will take another year and a half.


Unfortunately because this process is so long, Donna thinks it’s going to be very difficult for a lot of people to give up 6 months of jobs and life and family. So that’s going to cut down on the number of kids that get adopted out of Kenya.

If for some reason Donna is not granted the adoption, she will stay in Kenya and just be a part of Bernard’s life. But Donna realizes that if they can’t go to the U.S., she won’t be able to keep him alive for as long as she would if they were in the states. HIV patients that are on antiretroviral drugs eventually develop a resistance to the drugs and have to go on a different line of drugs. Only three different lines are available in Kenya, and Bernard is on the third, or last line. However, in the states there are many lines of antiretroviral drugs available. When Donna first met Bernard, Nyumbani told her he would not get out of his teen years. But now if Bernard gets adopted, Donna knows he will outlive her.


Not only has it been a lengthy process, there have been hiccups along the way. The other Nyumbani children don’t understand why Bernard is being adopted and they’re not. It puts Donna in a difficult position but she said she tries to explain to them that somebody had to be first and that somebody just happened to be Bernard. But once he’s adopted, hopefully they’re will be other people who want to adopt the children at Nyumbani. Every other weekend, Donna and Bernard invite one child from Nyumbani to come have a sleepover.

While Donna’s friends and siblings have been supportive, her stepson and daughter-n-law are not in favor of this adoption because of Bernard’s HIV status. Kevin and Deborah Hess, Donna’s stepson and daughter-n-law, think their daughter, Donna’s granddaughter, might become infected, and they can’t understand why Donna would put their daughter at risk. Kevin and Deborah are both PhD. Chemists and Donna said they know better or at least ought to know better. Donna said she has tried to assure them that she loves their daughter, Kayla, and would never put her at risk. She’s also sent them information on HIV, asked them to talk to their pediatrician and to do their own research. However, Kevin and Deborah currently have not decided if Bernard will have the chance to meet Kayla.

I asked Donna if she would still visit Kayla if Kevin and Deborah don’t allow Bernard to meet Kayla. Donna told me that as much as she loves Kayla, she would not leave Bernard behind. She said they were a package.


And on top of all that, the longer the adoption process takes, the less likely Donna will have a job when she gets back to the states. Her employer, Williams College, granted her an unpaid leave of absence for the past year, but if she’s not back in the states at work by the first of January 2008, she’ll lose her job. And there’s no way Donna and Bernard will be back to the states by the first of the year. Instead, they’re hoping for February or March at the earliest. Donna has been supporting herself and Bernard through her husband’s pension while they’ve been in Kenya, but the pension won’t be able to support them back in the states with Bernard’s medical costs and the U.S. cost of living.

But even with all the hurdles Donna has faced, she said it’s all been worth it. Bernard has allowed her heart to open up again. He’s reminded her how to laugh, how to start over, and how to love something again as much as she loved her husband.

I asked Donna how Bernard’s future will be different in the U.S. then it would be in Kenya. She said as tears rolled down her face, he’s going to live. He’s going to have the best medical care he can have. He’s going to have a good education. And best of all, he’s going to have opportunities.


Donna said she would encourage people looking to adopt to not rule out the possibility of adopting a HIV-positive child. If you look past your ignorance and realize HIV is simply a medical condition, they’re no different than any other child, Donna said.

Donna is truly an inspiration that you’re never too old to make a difference. She may only make a difference in Bernard’s life but that’s all that matters. On the other hand, if people see that Bernard is not a burden and decide they will adopt an HIV-positive child too, then maybe Donna will make a difference for thousands of AIDS orphans scattered across the world hoping to find a family and to be given a second chance.


Michael and I are going to Kitui to visit the Nyumbani Village, which will be a self-sustaining community to serve orphans and elders who have been left behind by the “lost generation” of the AIDS epidemic. So I’ll be spending my birthday there and returning to Nairobi on Friday. Until then…….