Freedom! (April 27th)

The investigation was done today! Molly and I are now free to live full-time together in a hotel in Vung Tau, and spend our days as we choose.

Monday morning the Director poked her head into the baby room and said: "Canh sat, hom nay" which means: "police, today". Of course, the police didn't come that day. But again, Loan got busy, tracked the investigator down, and ensured that he came out the next morning. He spent almost 2 hours going over the file. I was hiding out in a teacher's office the whole time, and the Director came in at one point to give an update. When she left, she said "truc trac" in a disgusted tone, and walked out. I asked what it meant - it translates to the word malfunction, but in context, she just meant that the investigator was being too picky and wasting her time. Anyways, I heard later that when he came into the baby room to take a picture of Molly, they had to wake her up, and her picture was of her wailing. Good girl!

So here is the whole story of this delay, as I currently understand it:

The Director of Adoptions ("DOA") in Hanoi had my file Feb 6, but Tet celebrations started that weekend, so he didn't process anything until the beginning of March. He sent the file back to the Provincial Justice Dept for further investigation, because Molly had been abandoned, not relinquished. On March 10, Miss Hue at the Justice Dept sent the request to a higher level of Provincial police for the investigation, as the local police had previous done the original report. At this stage, the request was lost in space. Loan has a good working relationship with Miss Hue, and found out the she had just recently found she had cancer. So when nothing happened with the file, at the 3 week mark, Loan asked her to send a 2nd request. But the 2nd request was simply a letter asking to trace the original letter, which was never found. Then Miss Hue was in and out of the hospital in Saigon for cancer treatements. Loan worked hard for me - she had lunch with a consultant, she spoke to the Director who runs the other 3 orphanages in the Vung Tau area, and my story got spread around. It seemed that everyone involved in adoptions knew about me and my plight. I credit the Vung Tau Director with coming up with the solution. She told Loan that the Justice Dept should send the original request out again. Simple? Yeah. Sigh. So lucky for me, Miss Hue's surgery was delayed, she was in the office working the next week, and Loan was able to convice her to send out the request as suggested. If not, there is nobody else to do her job when she's absent.

Within a week, the investigation was done. One day short of 7 weeks.

So, what's next? The investigation report has been sent back to the DOA in Hanoi. He has to sign off on it, and send it back to Miss Hue at the Provincial Justice Dept. Then she will schedule the adoption ceremony date with Loan. If all goes well, it's reasonable to expect the ceremony date in the next week or two. After the ceremony, I have another 2-3 weeks to wait until Molly's travel documents are ready, and then we can come home. I estimate 5 weeks, give or take.