At the age of over 60, after a lifetime of working, raising children and living a simple life in the city of Angers (France), Mr. Claude Alain Ribes still carries an unfilled void in his heart.
Half of his life's roots began in Dalat in 1955, and until now there is still no answer as to who his mother is, whether she is still alive or not, and where she is?
And the person who persistently searched for that answer was not him, but his daughters and his wife - Mrs. Chantal Bernier - the French woman who carried her husband's story with her, searching for each piece for many years.
Mr. Claude Alain Ribes and Mrs. Chantal Bernier (Photo: Family provided).
The only memory of a Vietnamese mother
According to documents kept from the war, Mr. Ribes, who was known as Duc when he was in Vietnam, was born on October 30, 1955 in Da Lat.
He was the result of a love affair between a Vietnamese girl named Bui Thi My Lien and a soldier of the French Expeditionary Force (CE) stationed in Da Lat.
The soldier was recently identified through DNA testing as Jean Farges, who returned home in 1956.
Meanwhile, the only memory that remained intact in Mr. Ribes's mind of his mother was the image of her holding a smaller baby and breastfeeding it. There was no face, no voice, no sign for him to recognize the mother who had given birth to him.
When he was 6 years old - in 1961 - Mrs. Bui Thi My Lien left him in Da Lat, relying on the care of the nuns of Saint Paul of Chartres. A few years later, he was transferred to the Phu My Hospice (L'hospice de Phu My, Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City) and was named Claude Alain Ribes.
Photo of Claude Alain Ribes when he was handed over to the nuns in 1961 (right photo) and the photo on his passport to go to France in 1965 (left photo) (Photo: Family provided).
In 1965, he was brought to France as a wartime mixed-race child by the FOEFI (French Children of Indochinese Origin) organization, to the Évreux orphanage (France). In 1966, a French family adopted him.
Since then, his Vietnamese childhood has only a few lines of old documents and a name, Bui Thi My Lien.
Growing up in France, Mr. Ribes studied hard, passed his baccalaureate, then studied law for a year before working in the Maine-et-Loire department until his retirement.
He and Chantal got married, had three daughters and adopted two sons. They now have six grandchildren in a warm, complete family. But he almost never talks about his origins.
Mr. Claude Alain Ribes when he was in a children's camp in Vietnam (Photo: Family provided).
“My husband is a very strong and sensitive person. He did not want to upset his adoptive parents, so for many years he did not search for anything,” said Mrs. Chantal.
After her adoptive parents passed away, their eldest daughter became curious about her father's Vietnamese blood and set out on a journey to find her roots with the help of a doctor named Minh in Vietnam.
In 1996, this doctor traveled to Da Lat, then Ho Chi Minh City to track down “Bui Thi My Lien”. Surprisingly, there were 28 women with the same name and all claimed to be the mother of a lost French-mixed child.
No DNA, no clear records, all traces are vague. Mr. Minh later suffered multiple strokes, then passed away, leaving the search unfinished.
“From that moment on, we were almost in despair. I didn’t even know if my husband’s mother was still alive,” Chantal recalled.
The search was almost hopeless.
After years of hiatus, Chantal resumed her own search in 2016 and 2018. But all efforts were in vain.
In February, the family decided to do a DNA test through a genetic database and discovered that Mr. Claude Alain Ribes was the son of Mr. Jean Farges - a French soldier stationed in Vietnam at that time.
However, Mr. Farges and his son (Mr. Ribes’s half-brother) have both passed away. “But his half-brother still lives in Alès and welcomed our family with all the warmth and kindness. Perhaps even my husband’s biological father did not know that the woman in Vietnam was pregnant with his child,” said Mrs. Chantal.
Among the few documents left by Mr. Farges’s family are a portrait of him as a young man and a photograph of two women, one young and one older. The young woman may be Mr. Ribes’s mother, but she may not be, as the photograph does not include any information about where or when it was taken.
Mr. Jean Farges as a young man (left photo) and the photo of him standing on the far right with two Vietnamese women (right photo) (Photo: Family provided).
All they have is a woman named Bui Thi My Lien, who gave birth in Dalat in 1955, sent her child to the nuns in 1961, and then disappeared from all records.
Mr. Ribes’s DNA is currently stored in a laboratory in Ho Chi Minh City, awaiting comparison when a suitable sample is available. But time has passed, and if his mother is still alive, she would be over 85 years old.
Mr. Claude Alain Ribes' family with 3 biological daughters still has some Vietnamese features (Photo: Family provided).
“We just want to find the mother who gave birth to my husband, or anyone who knew Bui Thi My Lien. She may have left Da Lat for Saigon to find work in the late 1950s. If anyone knows a woman with the same name who gave birth to a French-mixed child in 1955 and sent her child to the nuns in 1961, please help us,” Ms. Chantal said earnestly.
She said her husband had a beautiful life, a loving family, but the question of his origins was still there, smoldering and tormenting. She said: “Finding his biological father is also a miracle. We hope for another miracle, from Vietnam.”
The search continues, with a faint but never-ending hope.
Search information
Mother: Bui Thi My Lien
Gave birth to a son named Duc with a French man on October 30, 1955 in Da Lat.
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/doi-song/luat-su-phap-bi-bo-roi-nam-6-tuoi-dau-dau-tim-me-ruot-o-viet-nam-20251123132257834.htm
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