A New Brunswick mother’s ongoing battle to bring her adopted daughter home from an orphanage in Africa is finally over.
Rebecca Campbell received word on Feb. 22 that she was finally able to bring her daughter home from Sierra Leone.
Three days before that, she received word that four-year-old Becky was sick.
“I was worried, of course,” says Campbell. “I was determined to leave for Africa whether or not she has her citizenship. So on my birthday, the 28th of February, I left.”
Campbell says she'll never forget seeing Becky when she arrived to bring her home.
“When she saw me I just saw this skinny thing jumping up to me and we were both happy,” says Campbell.
Campbell and her son, Suliaman, immigrated to Canada on Sept. 11, 2001. Her flight from Brussels to Montreal had to turn around and land because of the terrorist attacks in the United States.
After settling in Moncton, Campbell became a nurse and would travel back to Africa with clothes and supplies for the local hospital. During one trip in 2014, she met two-year-old Becky – a baby girl who had been abandoned during the Ebola crisis in West Africa.
Campbell immediately started the adoption and immigration paperwork.
“(Becky) has a brighter future,” she says. “She's just doing her ABCs now. She knows A and B for now. We're working on it. She will go to school, enjoy food, milk that she never had … a better, bright future compared to millions of kids like her in Africa.”
Becky didn't have a name or date of birth. Campbell was allowed to choose a birth date for her and chose July 1.
“Canada is good to me in so many ways. It's a blessing to be here.”
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Jonathan MacInnis.
