Maids to the World,Saviors of Our Nation

My February 4th item titled “From Teachers to Maids, the ‘New’ Filipino Diaspora” attracted many comments sent to me via email. In the article I promised to write more follow up stories on their experiences. Here are some of them.

I was in Hong Kong in 1999 and had several ‘encounters’ with countrymen who are there as domestic help. The first one I met at a small souvenir-electronic store in Kowloon City, near the old airport. I was asking the vendor for the price of an item. The Chinese lady spoke no English. She waved at a girl dusting merchandise inside the store who then came out and spoke to me in English. She was Filipina. She did not realize I spoke Tagalog and flashed a big smile when she heard me talk. I had lost interest in the merchandise and instead started asking her questions.

I asked her how she got a visa to work in a Chinese business establishment. Very carefully and in hushed tones she explained that she was here as a domestic worker. The people who owned the store had an elderly parent that needed attention when no one else in the family was available. She also did usual domestic chores like cooking, laundry and cleaning house. She said the old lady she was caring for had a small bedroom enough for one single bed and a dresser. She had to sleep on the floor.

“May unan pero walang banig,” she said amusedly. Her luck changed, she said, when her employers realized that she not only spoke English but was also good with figures, was facile with the calculator and had accounting skills. They then asked her to spend most of her time in the store, and, on her seventh day, Sunday, if she worked she would get extra pay. She was overjoyed, of course.

As it turns out she finished a 4 year business course in one of the colleges in Bicol. She said she tried to find a job at a bank or an office but could find none. She said that to get employed she needed ‘connections’ which she did not have. And the pay level at those jobs? 6,000 pesos a month to start with and maybe expect an increase of another 500 pesos after a year. So with whatever money she could raise from savings, selling the pigs and chicken her family raised, she boarded a bus to Manila and pursued a foreign job as a domestic. It took her 4 months, and a few thousand pesos which her parents had to borrow from neighbors and friends, but she finally got her paperwork and ticket for Hong Kong. She was overjoyed. She signed a contract and an agreement to pay the employment/travel agency who got her the assignment $1500.00 within 12 months, the amounts deducted each month directly from her salary. Her contract called for a salary of $500.00 a month. She was ecstatic over her new found fortune, even if her net pay was only $375.00 a month because of what she had to pay the agency. She kept $75.00 for herself and the rest went to her parents to pay off their debts and help finance the education of her siblings.

That evening, our host from Cathay Pacific, took us to the Hong Kong island side for dinner, after which we gravitated to the “La Bamba” night club. Before getting there we passed a 7-11 convenience store. I broke away from our group to buy mints and gum . My real intent was to speak to a group of Filipino men sitting, hunched on the pavement at the side of the store. I engaged them in conversation. They said they too were domestic workers hired to clean apartment buildings. It was their night off and the only entertainment they could afford was meeting friends and having beers at the 7-11.

“We work hard and this is our only way of passing the time on our night off,” one of the men said. They said they did not have money to go dancing in night clubs and even if they did they said they were “not allowed” entrance into those places.

“We are lonely and we are sad,” one of them said, “and we are treated like slaves and ‘low class’ people”, he lamented.

Inside the night club there were ‘hostesses’ and some of them were Filipinas. I spoke with a couple of them and they said they came as domestic workers and are still classified as such but they made more money working in the club.

“How would your families in the Philippines react if they knew this is where you work,” I asked. We don’t tell them, they said.

“What our families back home expect from us keeps increasing. They want shoes, appliances, clothes, cameras and at the same time want us to keep sending them money” one explained. We can’t do that on a maid’s salary, she added.

Later that year I was in Barcelona on vacation and stayed at a small hotel located in the residential area of the city. This enabled me to use public transportation and mingle with the local population, doing what they do in their daily lives. It is a great way to ‘absorb’ the local culture, so to speak. On one of these bus trips to the “Ramblas”, the blocks long central plaza lined with shops, restaurants and street vendors and artists, I sat next to a couple of Filipinas with whom I engaged in a conversation about their lives and work.

They were both happy to be working in Spain. Both worked for families with small children. One of the two had a teaching degree from a school in Cebu while the other was a history major from Cavite. They said that aside from the usual domestic work they also helped the kids with their homework in subjects such as math and English. They said their employers also liked them because they were familiar with certain Castillian words that sprinkle our Philippine dialects, making communications much easier as compared to workers from Indonesia or Sri Langka. They had a six day work week and were off on Sundays. They said they used to go meet other Filipinas on their off days but recently they had taken a “second job”. On Sundays they each go to a home and do a thorough ceiling to floor cleaning job that takes about 10 hours but allows them to earn an extra $150.00 per week. They said they now look forward to going home because they had enough money to lavish on their families. Given the experience of most overseas workers doing domestic helper work they seemed to be exception.

In 2009 the 8 million overseas workers remitted some $ 17 billion, which comes to be about 10 to 12 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, a hefty contribution indeed. Unfortunately many of the 8 million end up paying a hefty personal price as well.

The sadness, loneliness, the aches and pains of servile employment are probably not worth it but in many cases they have no choice. Families rely on their remittances and in a way they have helped to save the nation.

Ldq44@aol.com

Next issue: Some to the really painful OFW stories.