She was a high school friend. One of my best and closest barkada. She married her boyfriend right after our high school graduation and delivered their first son seven months after . Another son followed December of the same year. While the rest of the barkada attended college, she worked as a clerk in a cosmetics laboratory which eventually ceased to operate due to huge business losses. Her husband was perpetually in and out of job during the whole time.
Before their financial crisis took its toll on her, she decided to go to Manila to try her luck. Guess there ain’t no luck when one works in a sardines factory and lived in a shanty while painfully separated from her family. Years later, she boarded a plane bound for Kuwait to work as a domestic helper. Everybody thought that finally luck smiled at her. Little did we know that the nightmare has just began.
Serving a rich family with ten children all minors, she’d wake up at three in the morning and sleep around midnight each day. Locked from the outside and her passport confiscated, she’d cry alone every single day, missing her family and her home, begging God to change her fate.
She was skin and bones when she escaped from her hell. When she was rescued, she looked like she was in her forties when in fact she was only in her mid-twenties. Her tears welled from her eyes out of immeasurable pain. Her wrinkles are traces of sacrifices beyond human imagination. But the thought of a comfortable life for her family kept her alive.
Refusing to go back to the Philippines empty-handed, she lived in a foreign land avoiding contact with the authorities on a daily basis. For a few years, she managed to send money back home, constantly supporting the needs of her family and her still jobless husband.
Everything was well until she disappeared strangely. A friend informed me that she was caught, arrested and detained. Being an illegal alien, she would be lucky if she would be deported without lashes and not raped.
My heart goes out to my friend. There are thousands of OFW abroad who are similarly situated as her. Maybe even more and worse than her plight. In their bid to escape from their misery, they not only left their family and friends, they also divested themselves of their self-respect and dignity. For me, that is the worst tragedy.
I’m hoping for the day when my friend doesn’t have to be a slave of others just so she can put food on her table. I’m hoping for the day when a Filipino doesn’t have to go abroad to have a comfortable life. I want to live in a time when a Filipino has his self-respect and dignity intact.
Before their financial crisis took its toll on her, she decided to go to Manila to try her luck. Guess there ain’t no luck when one works in a sardines factory and lived in a shanty while painfully separated from her family. Years later, she boarded a plane bound for Kuwait to work as a domestic helper. Everybody thought that finally luck smiled at her. Little did we know that the nightmare has just began.
Serving a rich family with ten children all minors, she’d wake up at three in the morning and sleep around midnight each day. Locked from the outside and her passport confiscated, she’d cry alone every single day, missing her family and her home, begging God to change her fate.
She was skin and bones when she escaped from her hell. When she was rescued, she looked like she was in her forties when in fact she was only in her mid-twenties. Her tears welled from her eyes out of immeasurable pain. Her wrinkles are traces of sacrifices beyond human imagination. But the thought of a comfortable life for her family kept her alive.
Refusing to go back to the Philippines empty-handed, she lived in a foreign land avoiding contact with the authorities on a daily basis. For a few years, she managed to send money back home, constantly supporting the needs of her family and her still jobless husband.
Everything was well until she disappeared strangely. A friend informed me that she was caught, arrested and detained. Being an illegal alien, she would be lucky if she would be deported without lashes and not raped.
My heart goes out to my friend. There are thousands of OFW abroad who are similarly situated as her. Maybe even more and worse than her plight. In their bid to escape from their misery, they not only left their family and friends, they also divested themselves of their self-respect and dignity. For me, that is the worst tragedy.
I’m hoping for the day when my friend doesn’t have to be a slave of others just so she can put food on her table. I’m hoping for the day when a Filipino doesn’t have to go abroad to have a comfortable life. I want to live in a time when a Filipino has his self-respect and dignity intact.
1 comment:
We all want to live an easy life, a life free of problems. But God has his own reasons for letting things happen, reasons that we have to decipher to understand and appreciate life.
Now, i tell you my friend, every time we face a problem, consider it a blessing because it means God wants us to be strong all the time, to be closer to Him and to remind us He is always there for us.
Post a Comment