An American woman's eight-month long search for her two children, who were taken away by her estranged husband from their home in the State of Georgia, has ended with an emotional reunion of mother and children at Alavanyo-Agorme in the Volta Region.
The kids - four-year-old Ashanti and three-year-old Faith - were declared missing weeks after they had been picked by their father, Tony Renard Johnson, from their mother, for a visit on April 22 this year.
It's been an emotional victory," she told the Ghana News Agency in Accra. "I am happy and nothing matters to me immediately," she said, as tears of joy rolled down her face.
Johnson, 43, and the mother of the children, Valencia Head, 25, had separated and were going through divorce as well as application for permanent custody of the children at the time.
A few days before judgement, Johnson picked them up for a visit, and he and the two young girls disappeared. They were neither seen nor heard of until November 8 when the State Department in Washington notified the local Sheriff Department in the State of Georgia that Johnson died of malaria in Ghana where he had been staying with the kids.
The report of the State Department also indicated that Ashanti and Faith were staying with a benevolent family in a village in the Volta Region after their father's death.
Based on this report, the State of Georgia authorities, in collaboration with the American National Centre for Missing Children sponsored Ms Head and
Consuello Brown, an attorney with the Griffith Judicial Circuit, to Ghana to negotiate and take custody of the children.
The devastated mother and the attorney arrived in Ghana last week where US Embassy officials who had been in contact with the benevolent family at Alavanyo-Agorme briefed them on the negotiation process.
The team subsequently made a trip to the village and successfully reunited Ms Head with her children at the weekend. In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Ms Head expressed joy at seeing her children after "almost eight months of desperate but clueless search."
"I now have my girls with whom I'll fly back home soon. That's the greatest thing that's happened to me," she said. Ms Head recounted her anxious moments during the search and said at a point life was "tasteless" to her.
The Americans, especially Ms Head and her advocate, were full of praise for the caretaker of the children whom they referred to only as Auntie Emma, saying although she lived in a village, she did her best for the children.
"She was a real mother and kind too," Ms Head said, adding that auntie Emma did not only provide the kids with their needs but she also enrolled them in the local school at Agorme.
Besides, she made the negotiations easy and the transition very smooth. In appreciation of her gesture, Ms Head presented auntie Emma with some money and gifts.
The American delegation was amazed when they realised that the two girls had picked up the Ewe language of the Alavanyo area and could speak it fluently without any effect on their mother accent.
One issue that remains unclear to Ms Head and the US Embassy, however, is what influenced Johnson's decision to settle in Ghana with the children, since he had never been to Africa.
"Probably it is because Ghana is one of the countries that one can easily enter without having to go through any stringent immigration requirements," a source at the US Embassy said.
Ms Head expressed regret over the death of the children's father saying, despite the divorce, she wished he had not died. "Despite our differences, I feel sorry that he died, Right now, my children will live the rest of their life without a father."
