Haitian politician tries to help Zoe

Olympian Alison Herst has turned to a Haitian politician for help in bringing her adopted daughter Zoe back to North Bay.

Herst and her father Paul have been in Port -au-Prince since October 18 trying to complete an adoption process which began over a year ago.

All that was required was for the Interior Ministry to issue Zoe the Haitian passport necessary for her to leave the country.

Things hit a snag, though, when Herst's Haitian lawyer mistakenly applied for Zoe's passport in her adopted rather than birth name.

The delay the action caused prompted Alison to contact a Haitian politician familiar with the vagaries of the country's bureaucracy, said Herst's boyfriend Stacy Jackson.

"This politician was saying that once the passport
application goes to Interior Ministry, they put it aside for three weeks before they even look at it.," Jackson said.
"So the politician is looking at trying to take that hold of the application and getting it back to the immigration office where he can then have the passport done within a few days."

As soon as that happens, Jackson said, the three will be able to return to Canada.

"But we'll see," Jackson said, "because nothing has gone the way it was supposed to go and right now she's at the mercy of the Haitian government."