LIBERIA: As war closes in around a Monrovia orphanage, its children dream of a life in the US, writes Declan Walsh.
Agatha Williams, a five-year-old girl with a shy smile, lives in a squalid Monrovia orphanage. She sleeps on a sodden mattress in a filthy room. Her skin is covered in scabies and her stomach is rumbling.
She also has two sets of parents - one possibly dead, the other dying of worry.
Four years ago the violent currents of Liberia's civil war snatched away her birth parents. Nobody is quite sure what happened to them. Agatha was brought to the orphanage. Now a second set of parents awaits, thousands of miles away, in a tiny cattle-ranching town in Texas. Caught in the crossfire of an unforgiving war, Agatha cannot reach them. "I want to go but the war is coming," she says quietly, sucking on a safety pin.
Jeff Atkinson, an electricity meter reader, and his wife Kim started the adoption process last year. They had met on the Internet, and found their new daughter there too, on a site called Angel's Haven. Social workers visited, court papers were filed. But then Liberia's civil war intervened.
For the past 12 days rebel shells have pounded the seaport capital, massacring hundred of civilians. Stray bullets zing through the deserted streets. There is no way out. "We feel trapped because there's nothing we can do. We want nothing more than to have our girl here with us," said Ms Atkinson by phone from Dickens, a cattle-ranching town of 250 inhabitants.
Agatha knows little of the Atkinsons, save for a thick file of adoption papers and a small photo of a couple in cowboy hats. On the far side of the Atlantic, they spend their time reading the news and on their knees praying at the Bethel Baptist church in nearby Spur.
"We are dealing with this through prayers and our faith in God. You can't get much higher than that," Ms Atkinson said in a quivering voice.
Agatha is one of 13 children in the Hannah B. Williams orphanage waiting for a ticket to the US. Rebel shelling has not yet reached its neighbourhood, but living conditions are dire.
Pools of water drip through the roof into the sodden dormitories, where 150 children sleep on filthy mattresses. Scabies is widespread. The city's cholera epidemic knocks at the door. And two days ago, food stocks ran out.
Hannah Williams, an imposing woman who started the orphanage in 1978, is at her wits' end. After a morning of searching for rice, she returned empty-handed and weeping.
"The food is there but I don't have no money. It's too much for me, I can't stand it any more," she sobbed, collapsing into a cracked plastic chair.
She produced a pile of folders crammed with reports, certificates and images of the life that awaits the children in the US.
The Carlson family of Lone Lake, Minnesota, sent three-year-old Patience Williams a folder of photos. They show a large suburban home, a shining sports utility vehicle parked in the driveway, Stephen Carlson trimming the hedge, and his smiling wife serving dinner.
In their adoption application the couple enthused about "learning and growing in our knowledge of Liberia". To prepare for Patience's arrival, they prepared Liberian meals and studied its traditions. But for now, all there is to know is war.
Liberian pleas for foreign intervention may finally be answered. The forward team for a 1,300-strong force of West African peacekeepers landed in Monrovia yesterday. And the US has sent 2,000 troops by sea, although President Bush appears wary of committing them to onshore peacekeeping.
"Somebody needs to get in there with some backbone," said Barbara Taylor, a Girl Scout leader from Phoenix, Arizona. The 57-year-old woman has adopted two Chinese girls; now she is waiting for seven-year-old Dorothy Rubben. Like many US parents, she has written to President Bush, Colin Powell and her local politicians. "I don't know what else I can do," she said.
Even if there was a quick way out of Monrovia, another obstacle remains - American bureaucracy.
The US embassy in Monrovia, which has been hit twice by shelling in recent weeks, has refused visas to the children.
"At first the State Department said they would airlift them out. But then they had a big meeting and refused, saying they didn't want another Somalia," said Ms Grover.
The US embassy says it must investigate the children's cases - to make sure they are genuine orphans - before granting visas.
An embassy official said: "While we remain concerned for these children, the ongoing violence makes conducting investigations impossible."