leaving et cetera
Yes, yes, yes. I have heard this argument before.
I know about the headlines. Deployment of Overseas Foreign Workers Hits 1-M Mark. 5 Dead O.F.W.’s in Saudi. O.F.W. 18th Pinay Rape Victim in Kuwait. We Slept With Dog, Ate Leftovers for $200/month.
And I know the statistics. At this moment, one out of every seven Filipinos is overseas, sometimes, like me, by choice. But more often than not, it’s by necessity. On their backs rest the educations of siblings and offspring, the strength of the roof on the family’s heads, the weight of the rice on the table. Starvation, after all, motivates relentlessly.
I know that even girls and boys as young as ten have already thought of where to go. Abu Dhabi, Italy, America, Australia. Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai. Brunei, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. Currently, my people work in 170 countries, and they roam the world as maids and engineers, teachers and nurses, prostitutes and entertainers. And of course there’s the sea. About a quarter of the world’s seafarers come from the Philippines, the most of any single nationality.
Like you I sigh too, when I think about how it seems as if we are a country best divided into those who have left, and those who have been left behind.
It’s a fate fraught with too much uncertainty. Newspapers are rife with stories of abuse, of salaries withheld for months, of passports kept under lock and key in the master’s safe. And the people who leave all know this. Our women have been beheaded in the middle east so many times, the stories run rampant in local news. Workers are burned with irons, made to eat food they would not even serve their dogs, trudge through 16-hour days and 7-day workweeks. Verbal abuse hardly raises an eyebrow anymore; it’s simply par for the course.
It’s common knowledge that a person bound for work overseas never says he is leaving to make his fortune. Fate is fickle, and tales of failures are too prevalent for anyone not to doubt or fear. So instead, she merely says that she is off to try her luck. And under her breath she hopes, and dreams, and prays prays prays.
I know all about how we export our women, our men, our minds. I know that we’ve dispatched our hands and our feet and our expertise to every corner of the globe. We ship out the way we care for people, our warmth, our smiles. We package love in nuggets, ready for distribution, and every other facet of us is simply a bullet point in a resume. Mothers leave and care for other children, while their own sons and daughters walk through lives unguided. Fathers disappear for years on end, and then come home to sullen strangers, who only know them by the names on the cheques.
I know all of this; you don’t have to preach. I am, after all, the girl who dug up her roots and fled; the girl who can’t seem to put them back down again. But whatever you may think, I still love las islas; it is an indelible part of me. And like the many women who have sought lives elsewhere, I can’t help but worry about the sad, poor motherland I’ve left behind.
When the best of us go away, you ask, who is left to hold the fort? Our nation is falling apart at the seams, you tell me, and the brightest minds are busy elsewhere, building other bridges, teaching other children, thinking another country’s thoughts.
I’ve been called out on this before, you know. And when I was younger, I wrote something more scathing in rebuttal. But I’m a little wiser now. I still think it’s a tad unfair for previous generations to screw up so badly that they’ve condemned their people to lives in exile, and then expect their children to give everything up just to clean the mess.
You spout all these speeches about giving back, about loyalty, about raising our people up. Have you forgotten then, what you’ve done? You gave birth to me in a country that feeds on ever-thinning recycled hopes. I have no memories of better days. All I’ve ever seen is dirt and grime. You raised me to be suspicous of law enforcement, of government, of the very institutions you now demand we uphold. You made me hold my breath as I drove across highways, the stories of hold-ups, and theft, and rape fresh in my mind.
The tighter you cling to the thrones you sit on, the harder you hold to your crowns, the easier the decision becomes. There is so very little space for me, for the rest of us. You point towards goals, and yet leave us no room to move. You want change, but only if its convenient. You want salvation, but only on your terms.
That’s not good enough anymore. And that’s all I care to say about that.
Originally published on Tumblr, October 2010.