margaret
redmond
whitehead
VENERANDA MWAKASALI, Kentucky
reunited 2017
"It wasn't like nightmares, like I was scared and woke up in the middle of the night. I'd just wake up, worried about my children. Just because of stress. Just wake up in the middle of the night, like, Oh, my children. Are they alive?"
Veneranda's daughter Angel and son David, were kidnapped by militant rebels in South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2008. Believing them dead, she resettled to Providence, Rhode Island in 2013.
LEFT: Veneranda scrolls through her phone.
She discovered in 2013 that David and Angel were still alive and living in a refugee camp in Uganda.
Her first petition to bring David and Angel to the United States was unsuccessful.
RIGHT: Veneranda keeps a picture of her son David on her phone.
In February 2017, David and Angel were temporarily delayed from traveling to the United States by Trump's first travel ban.
The family reunited later that month when the travel ban was reversed.