BENCHWARMER

Ramon Dacawi
(Johann D. Dacawi takes over this corner with a piece from his musashiboogie weblog.)
In service for a better life?

I think Mr. Chip Tsao was addressing the Fillipino fashion designer Boyet Fajardo on the piece he wrote. Probably it dawned on him, when he read about the news on the fashion designer, that Filipinos could now really be a threat in claiming the disputed Spratly Islands.

Filipino workers here in Italy must always flex their muscles before their patrons to show them that they are capable of scrubbing toilets day in day out. Many Filipinos were outraged, running amok on the web criticizing Mr. Chip on his article. The Philippine government shouldn’t be preoccupied too much about this; the Chinese government should.

The Overseas Filipino Workers of today are called “Modern Heroes” (Mga Bagong Bayani ng Bayan). I don’t know why they call them “heroes”. Maybe because the OFWs have something in common with our World War II veterans, who are still fighting to claim for their pensions or benefits from government agencies. The veterans are luckier than the OFWs because they can always show their war medals at any government office to prove they are WW II veterans.

Here, the OFWs are suffering from the same problems they encounter back home. At Philippine embassies and consulates, when they ask for assistance, the government employees run OFWs in circles. The price of being an OFW hero is a broken family. The core of Filipino family values are often harshly tested by working abroad. And when you hear their stories it will only break your heart.

Like the “TNT” who was frantically searching for fellow Pinoy balikbayans to take an extra person with them. It’s difficult for her situation that’s why she is sending her months old daughter back home. There’s the father who only takes five euros from his monthly pay for a pack of cigarettes and the rest he sends back home.

The wife who confessed to her husband that she had an affair. Every time she would come home from work she was tired, lonesome and depressed. One day she met this guy who filled the void in her life.

The Italian police labeled a letter written by a Filipino teenage as evidence when they investigated his death. The boy wrote that he was being bullied and taunted at school because his peers said he was gay. Case closed.

Many OFW parents are worried about their children back home because the money they send isn’t enough to comfort and guide their kids to the right path to growing up. A father in the Philippines tries to be a mother to his adolescent daughter who had just had her first menstruation. And how about the teenagers who spend their parents’ earnings on wrong and destructive vices?

Filipino care givers here oftentimes are paid more than any other immigrant workers. Maybe because Filipinos add a special ingredient into their work. Tiyay, a native of Iloilo, took good care of an old Italian lady until her death. When her employer was sent to live the rest of her remaining months in a hospital, Tiyay stayed with her even in the nights where she didn’t even have a bed to rest on. Tiyay was the only person at the old woman’s funeral who cried like rain and wailed uncontrollably, much to the amazement of the deceased’s family and friends.

Rebecca Stephenson, an English woman who lives and works in Venice, always lets her Filipino part-time maid and family use the master bedroom to sleep in while Rebecca and her husband are out of the country for a month or so.

There’s Boy, a good cook and driver. He was worried about his employer’s health because everything he cooks they eat and want more. One time he told me that he thinks his patrons have Filipino blood in them now because when he served them Orate (a Mediterranean fish) in Paksiw, he could hear their slurps in the hall way, salvaging what was left on the fish’s head. Filipino care givers keep their employers’ families in tact while their own families are in pieces. And like any other Filipino parent, I know when my sons will tell their children and grandchildren what line of work their mama and papa had, they will be proud of what we did. I know this because we are Filipino.