The answer to the question, What is next?

I really won’t blame you if you had stopped reading this blog. I mean, there has been scant good news and I am sure my whining has gotten a wee bit tiresome. Believe me, I would love to get beyond this phase. But we are stuck.

(Fair warning-this is a very long post.)

Basically, while our dossier has been in Nepal since February, it can not be submitted without what is called a Guarantee Letter (henceforth GL) issued by the Embassy in Nepal. And the GL will not be issued from the Embassy until they receive notice of our immigration approval which comes from the National Visa Center (NVC) after they receive notice from Citizen and Immigration Services (CIS) of our approval.

A blow by blow (because I am sure it is fascinating stuff):

March 21. 171H received. (Yay!)

April 4. Confirmation received from the NVC that notice was sent to the Embassy in Nepal of our approval. (Yay!)

April 14. We have our fingerprints redone by CIS because they are due to expire on May 11. We come home to learn that we have not GL because the Embassy requires the 1600A packet as well and ours is still at CIS in Ho Chi Minh City, not Kathmandu. (Boo.)

April 15(ish). NVC confirms that they sent the request for the transfer the 1600A packet to CIS in Ho Chi Minh City on April 4, the same day they notified the Embassy. CIS denies ever receiving the email. (Yea, right)

April 20. NVC confirms that they resent the email to CIS.

April 24. Confirmation received that our 1600A packet was finally sent from Ho Chi Minh City to Kathmandu. (So essentially? that would be three weeks lost at that point.)

May 7. Confirmation received from our facilitator that the Embassy in Nepal has issued our GL and that all the dossiers currently in country from our agency will be submitted in the next couple of days. (Yay!)

So with that good news, our program manager went on vacation. Thinking all was well.

Except. All was not well.

The latest dramalama?:

When she returned from vacation, our program manager learned that the Embassy had not issued our guarantee letter. The others? Yes. But ours? No.

(So yes, there is that issue of why our facilitator in Nepal said they had ours when in fact they did not but that is to resolve later. For now, the question is, why has the Embassy not issued the letter?)

Today we learned that it is because by the time the Embassy received the packet from CIS in Ho Chi Minh City and had gotten around to processing our GL, our fingerprints had expired!! (Remember, May 11) Our fingerprints most certainly have not expired but it would appear so on the 171H that they have.

Of course, this would not have been an issue had the email mis-que never happened in the first place. Because the packet would have arrived in Nepal three weeks earlier and the letter spit out before May 11.

So, my afternoon?

Scream, cry, throw things at the computer screen when I read of this latest development. (In truth, I did none of these things though I wanted to.) (I may have cried a wee bit.)

Run home.

Take the new 171H which arrived yesterday with the new expiration date and fax that to our agency so she can scan it to the Embassy in the hopes that maybe, just maybe they can use it to issue the GL (seeing as how they already have our visa approval and our 1600A packet and all they need is confirmation that our fingerprints have not actually expired).

Get on the horn with the NVC to find out whether they have received notice of our new prints and, if so, whether they have sent it on to the Embassy. (Because lets face it, the chances are slim to none that the Embassy will accept the scan from the agency.)

Anyone still reading? Did this make any sense? There are so many entities involved in this, it can get a little very crazy.

But for me it boils down to that lost email. And the fact that because of that lost email, we’ve lost approx. 6-7-8 weeks (depending on how long this takes to resolve). Which will translate to a much longer wait for a referral given the rate at which dossiers are being submitted. It feels like I am trying to so hard and not getting anywhere; only moving backwards. And that stings.

The silver lining?

1) I became so flipping angry. And I am finding that incredibly energizing. And given that my energy level has been the lowest it has been in a long, long time, I will take the energy anyway I can get it.

2) I am learning really early how to be a mommy advocate because it does look like I am going to have to fight ever step of the way to see this through.

3) I feel, once again, that I will see this through. I’ve been holding the towel in my hand, wondering if I should just throw it in. Today, I realized that, no, I am not ready to give up.

So, what is next?

Post Script: When I called the NVC, they confirmed that a scanned document was received today. But they could not confirm what it was or who sent it. NVC is a funny place. Whenever you call them, the customer service reps. can handle the most basic of questions, give out the most basic of information. But if you press for clarification, they have to put you on hold and ask a supervisor. But you never actually get to speak to a supervisor, the people who can really answer your questions. So what I want to know is, who are these supervisors? Anyway, there was no one that could open up this document and tell me what it was. Apparently, that is beyond the mysterious supervisors as well. (In truth, I do get this to a degree. I mean a call center shouldn’t be able to open up a sensitive immigration document. They are looking at a database. It just seems like if someone is taking the trouble to key in that a document was received, that maybe a topic or a sender could also be keyed? Seems like there could be a better system is all I’m just saying.)

Post-post script: Not related what-so-ever to adoption. After all this, I got to go help my buddy pick out jewelry for her wedding. She is just glowing. And I am so very happy for her.

A lot going on these days

There have been a lot of developments in Nepal over the past 10 days or so. I haven’t had the energy to blog about the recent events which have sent my head and heart spinning. The Prime Minister of Nepal resigned this past Monday.

Since I hadn’t been following Nepal news on a daily basis* my first clue that something was going down came late last week when my friend who is in Nepal now posted a status update on FB about a late night escape from the Terai (where she is doing research) back to Kathmandu.

(*really, for those who are in the process of IA, how do you keep up with everything? I’ve been focusing on learning about Nepal from a cultural , religious, and geographic perspective and then also about attachment and parenting. And just monitoring completion of our dossier which has been like pulling teeth. I’d let current affairs slip a wee bit. Oopps.)

Anyway, later on my friend posted some news articles. I am glad for that heads up now because I don’t know how I would have reacted if I had turned on the computer Monday to the news of Nepal’s Prime Minister resigning without it.

As it was, I was crushed. It was really hard to say at that point what the current crisis would mean for adoptions. I think it may have been my lowest point in the last two+ years. All my doubts, all my insecurities erupted to the surface.

I am feeling a bit better today though plenty of questions remain. I don’t want to go into a political analysis of the situation. I have not studied emerging democracies nor do I know the full political context of Nepal. I am learning. It does now look like there is cause for optimism that Nepal will be able to form a new coalition government and that is a good thing at so many levels. We’ll just have to continue monitoring things. As for the adoption process, my understanding is that Ministry of Women, Children, and Social Welfare is still accepting dossiers and there has been confirmation of the first couple of referrals being received. So things are still moving.

Ho Hum

I haven’t been in much of a bloggy mood of late. I have no news to share. Our agency and I spent a good while trying to track down and resolve whatever misfire happened between NVC and CIS in Ho Chi Minh City. Last Friday we were told that the 1600 packet had been sent off from Vietnam to Nepal finally. (Three weeks after the initial request was sent.)

On Monday, we received an email from our agency stating that they anticipated picking up the last Guarantee letters from the Embassy and submitting all the dossiers that they have waiting (5) this week.  Since then, nothing.  So, I have no idea whether our dossier has finally been (dusted off after 2 1/2 months of sitting somewhere and) submitted.

Ho Hum.