Saabino Family Rescue underway as of August 2.

UPDATE - see more recent updates below:

Bakhita has received funding from you amazing donors to partially conclude her entire family’s 11,200 mile escape from war-torn South Sudan, begun in 2015.

Francis, Severign, and Gloria are en route from Cairo, 2500 miles south, to the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya! Funds are still needed for Bakhita’s round trip ticket to Nairobi from Boston where she will join them as interpreter during their visa interview. Additional expenses include housing, medical exams/vaccines, food, transportation to and from the embassy and to the airport where three tickets to Boston must purchased.

Bakhita sends the following short video to express her gratitude to all benefactors for your compassion, generosity, and patience with innumerable fundraising efforts during her decade long ordeal to help her family legally immigrate, attaining their goal of citizenship, as Bakhita did, in our beloved United States of America.

https://youtube.com/shorts/jD1I6EWwqw4?feature=shared

Bakhita is sending this update:

Joy and Thanksgiving to God

 

for inspiring all compassionate donors who are helping to rescue her three courageous remaining family members. You have prevented their forced return to war-torn South Sudan after being stranded in Egypt for the past four years, during and after pandemic restrictions.

Bakhita, her brother Francis, sister Severign, and niece Gloria were notified in June by the National Visa Center that their long awaited visa interview at the United States embassy in Nairobi is scheduled for August 13th, now just two weeks away! We are all overjoyed and still trying to raise all funding to organize the dangerous and arduous 2,300 mile journey by air and bus from Cairo to Nairobi. Bakhita will travel 7,200 miles from Boston to Nairobi to serve as interpreter during the interview, conducted only in English. Plane tickets for all from Nairobi to Boston must be purchased. The final leg of their incredible journey to freedom will place them safely in Bakhita’s Maine household with Bakhita, their mother Mary, and younger brother Augustine. We will always remember little six year old Christine of happy memory who died during the exile caused by terrible COVID restraints. And we will always remember and pray for all of you for making this possible!

To complete this rescue, funds are still needed for housing, food, required medical exams/vaccinations, and Homeland Security background checks. Transportation from a rented room to the Embassy and finally to the airport with

layovers along the way being very costly.

The anxiety caused by having to organize all of this in the allotted six week window of time permitted by the NVC knows no bounds. Please pray for everything to be accomplished by the deadline of August 13, 2024. Also please share this link with your online contacts. If their funding goal cannot be reached in time, rescheduling can be a long-time option of a year or more, or their case can be closed if the reason for tardiness is deemed insufficient. 

Fear not! God’s miracle for the Saabino’s is almost done.

Please pray and share near and far.



Original request:

My name is Kimberly Tison. It is my great honor to have been immigration sponsor for my friend Bakhita Saabino’s Catholic family of five from South Sudan for the past decade. 

I need to tell you about their plight in an effort to save them by bringing them to live in these United States, our blessed ‘Land of the Free’. They are currently stranded in Cairo, Egypt.

Two members of this family, Bakhita’s mother Mary and brother Augustine, were separately granted visas in 2016 and 2017 prior to the pandemic.

The above photo is of Mary, with her daughter Bakhita, the day Mary proudly became a United States citizen at age 73 in 2022.

Her two other adult children, Francis, Severign, and granddaughter Gloria, continue to wait for their visa interview after being stranded in Cairo on their way to the United States in 2019 due to pandemic travel restrictions. Tragically, one of Mary’s grandchildren, six year old Christina, passed away during this time from lack of medicine to treat complications of spina bifida.

Now the three remaining family members are desperately waiting to be reunited with Mary and their brother Augustine, who have resided with their sister Bakhita in Maine since they legally immigrated.

Bakhita herself became a United States citizen in 2004 after arriving from South Sudan in 2002, prior to the outbreak of war in South Sudan. She is the driving force behind rescuing her family from their war-torn homeland. She has spoken to many groups throughout the northeastern United States, hoping to raise funds by personally recounting her family’s struggle to escape the war. Unfortunately, time may be running out, given developments directly across the Egyptian border in Gaza, potentially spreading war to the entire Middle East.

After the three-year COVID closure, American embassies re-opened and began again granting visa interviews in January 2023. Interviews for immigrants to the United States from South Sudan are conducted only at the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya so travel expenses will become an another hurdle for the family when the time comes. Bakhita monitors the U.S. embassy website in Nairobi daily for travel and safety updates.

Once notification is received from the National Visa Center regarding an interview, they will have just a five week window in order to organize the dangerous two thousand mile journey from Cairo to the American embassy in Nairobi. Once there, Bakhita will meet them to interpret during their interview. It is conducted in English and the family speaks only their tribal language of Azande, so they would not be able to travel without her as interpreter. Because Bakhita grew up prior to the war, she was able to be educated and speaks four languages fluently. 

We are trying to raise funds for them to continue renting their small quarters in Cairo, buying food, and purchasing medicine for Severign who is afflicted with epilepsy. They can be evicted without notice for falling behind in rent — a certain death sentence because South Sudanese Christians are persecuted in Egypt. Francis cannot work to earn money because of this. No one will hire them because they are not of the same faith and do not sound Egyptian. They are completely dependent on the empathy and understanding of compassionate strangers on the other side of our world to save them.

Friends here have done much fundraising but in this unpredictable economy and with the global situation as it is, such assistance is becoming very limited.

Even if you can spare nothing for a donation, we ask you to kindly consider forwarding their story to as many of your friends as possible.

Some of your own friends or online acquaintances may be able to help them hang on until their visa interview.

 If you are able, would you please offer any amount you can share, no matter how small? If enough of us do so, it will help to keep them in shelter, food, and medicine until they can be reunited with their mother Mary, brother Augustine, and sister Bakhita, who by the grace of God, are now living in safety in the United States.

We humbly express our gratitude to you for any assistance you can provide, especially your prayers, to alleviate their suffering.