P H I L I P P I N E S
Letters of Longing, Hope
MANILA — "I wonder why I ended up in this hot city?" Edna, a Filipino single mother of two, wrote in the wee hours of the morning from her tiny room in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where she has been a domestic worker for two years.
Miles away, in Jeddah, still another compatriot wrote: "We have just ended Ramadan. It's very tiring. True, they don't eat in the morning but they sleep at dawn. So we lack sleep also because they keep on ordering us about."
In Amman, Jordan, Edna, another Filipino domestic helper, wrote in broken English: "I am now finish my third month for suffering so far to my children."
Musings, longings, dreams for a better future, regret, loneliness, fear, anger, and guilt run the gamut of emotions expressed by overseas Filipino workers in handwritten letters they send to activist groups here in the Philippines, the world's largest organised exporter of human labour.
"It's heartbreaking," says Ellene Sana of Kakammpi, a non-government group fighting for migrant workers' rights, referring to the letters that they receive and respond to religiously.
"Sometimes you think these are stories you only read in the 'komiks' (fiction magazines) But these are true stories," she explains.
One letter, Sana recalls, that brought tears to her eyes was from a male worker in Seoul, South Korea, who felt compelled to write to Kakammpi (ally) after he read a story on its website, called 'When I Woke Up, Mother was Gone'.
Edwin (not his real name) said that it reminded him of his three-year-old son, who slept on his chest until the day he left for Korea to take up a better paying job. "Can you imagine what pain this little boy feels?" he wrote. "When he wakes up, the father who used to play with him and who is beside him when he sleeps is gone."
True enough, Edwin wrote, when he called up from overseas, his son did not talk to him. "I cried," he said.
Like most of the Philippines' 7 million workers across the continents, Edwin said he could not find a good and stable job and left because "I couldn't stand seeing my wife and five kids living in a 12-square metre house."
"We sometimes have a tendency to look at this (responding to letters) as work," admits Sana. But, she says, the staff of Kakammpi try not to, because behind the letters are real people. "When they write they are investing their emotions."
Some of their "pen pals" they end up meeting when the workers come home for vacation. Others call them up through mobile phones. Some write and send photographs of themselves through e-mail. "It becomes harder because there's now a face behind the story," says Sana.
Labour Undersecretary Lucita Lazo, head of the newly created Office of Reintegration of overseas Filipino workers, says the importance of communication and connection to someone thousands of miles away from his or her loved ones cannot be underestimated.
Lazo says overseas Filipinos need "a sounding board" for thoughts and feelings that they sometimes find difficult to express with family members, who they either do not wish to burden with their problems or who they do not think will understand them."
Others write to NGOs because their own families do not bother to send them letters, except when they want more money. As Mar, a former seaman, said: "It's very painful not to receive any letter especially when he sees that others have received one."
Esther Ganal, who worked for nine years as a domestic helper in Singapore, recalls burying herself in work "in order to forget" when she receives no news from her family.
Sana says some write to unload feelings of guilt over extramarital affairs. "Usually they are confessions," she says. "They feel comfortable telling someone they don't really know but whom they can trust to keep a secret."
Some letters can be hilarious, detailing the workers' misadventures in foreign lands, says Sana. Others add a touch of sentimentality -- one composed a poem, another sent some grains of fine sand from the Saudi Arabian desert.
Still, other letters can be cries for help, she says. Some have written letters detailing abuses they have suffered in the hands of employers. One letter, 'A Call for Help: Taiwan', detailed the plight of 300 migrant workers who received lower wages because of fake contracts.
Sana says that when intervention is needed in letters that they receive, they discuss the matter collectively to come up with an action plan. Often, she says, the letters are a reminder of the selflessness of many workers, such as 19-year-old Raida, a domestic worker in Abu Dhabi.
Raida wrote that she was toiling in a foreign country "so that my siblings won't end up like me". She had to work at a young age, she wrote, and did not finish high school. Now, she is sending a sister through a computer course in university and another is in third year high school.
"I am glad that Allah gave me the strength," Raida says of her long, hard journey far away from the familiar comforts of home. (Marites Sison/Inter Press Service)
