Thursday, December 11, 2008

Homeward bound...and back again

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Homeward bound...and back again
Sunday, 12 19, 2006

By the time this article sees print, I shall be sitting up buckled to my seat as my plane hurtles through the air at 35,000 feet. Bound for home from Amman, Jordan, where I attended the Parliamentarians’ Side Meeting on the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, I am sure many of the passengers are overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), anxious like me to be home for Christmas and, in the company of their loved ones, to usher in the New Year.

In the global village, the Filipino has proved to be a ubiquitous presence that cannot be ignored. He is everywhere. In the shipping lanes of the world, behold the Filipino seafarer. In the hospitals and health care facilities of advanced countries, find the Filipino doctors and nurses and medical technicians. The list goes on...teachers, construction workers, entertainers, hotel personnel, caregivers and domestic helpers. And whether it comes at the end of a contract of short duration or a protracted tour of duty, the date of that trip back home is the reddest-letter day in the calendar of the OFW.

The Philippine occupational diaspora must be a racial memory of our Malay forebears “who crossed the boats as frail as their hearts were strong.” Years after the late Blas F. Ople saw the potential of this export industry for the Philippine economy in the mid-1970s, the OFWs have made their mark all over the world. Other countries have tried to get into the act — to the extent even of encouraging their nationals to settle for wages half of what our OFWs were being offered by their foreign employers — and failed. No other nationals can compete against the intelligence, resourcefulness and bull-headed industriousness of the OFWs.

Above everything else, it is undoubtedly the love for family that motivates the OFW to endure a period of alienation in a strange land, to suffer the distress and anguish often inflicted by manipulative employers, just to be able to earn elsewhere what he cannot earn in his own country. Once out there, he does not mind becoming transformed into one of those souls who wait with certitude at each dawn for an insidious hand to wrap a cobweb of anxiety and self-pity around his heart. But he endures the unfamiliar weather, the aberrant culture, the pangs of loneliness, and everything else that comes his way — because he has that special day of going back home to look forward to.

The denouement of this endurance is a new or refurbished house here, a jeepney there and a couple of appliances that the family had enthusiastically requested him to buy. And, if he still has a few remaining dollars — prudence be damned! — an almost mindless splurge in the malls, with the entire extended family in tow.

Sadly, the joyful homecoming of the OFW is beclouded by the usual aggravation at the airport. Look at HIM suffer from the undisciplined Customs personnel, the rude porter out to make a fast buck, the taxi driver who fleeces him with outrageous charges, and the grifters who, for a fee of course, volunteer to recover pieces of precious luggage that somehow get lost while in transit to the baggage claim area.

These vexations that accompany the OFWs’ return to their native soil are, however, minor if posited against the neglect heaped upon them by our government. Except for the lip service of being hailed as the nation’s modern-day heroes, nothing has been done for this faceless group of individuals who for years, have been buoying up our economy by their dollar remittances in the billions. O tempora, O mores! Where are the programs for their welfare as they settle into their sunset years? Despite having helped keep afloat an economy that would have crashed already if not for them, they do not even have their own hospital, their own bank, their own insurance company. And why were the monies set aside for them in the past used for the elections?

Yet, still, the OFW is luckier than many of us who chose to sweat it out in our country. He has seen how the grass grows on the other side of the fence and has been a participant to that growth, instead of staring in despair at the infertile employment landscape of his native land. The OFW is the teacher who could not land a teaching job here and had gone on to become a maid in Italy; the comely but unlettered barrio lass who has suddenly become a cosmopolite in Roppongi; the jobless engineer who had gone on to Iraq to build a superhighway; the seafarer who has planted the Filipino seed in practically every port around the world; the Filipino citizen who is physically and mentally ready and willing to take on a job, but is unable to find it in his own country.

The OFW then, as the song goes, looks at clouds from both sides, taking note of the silver lining as well as the dark areas that presage inclement weather ahead. This self-knowledge that arises out of his travail in foreign shores enables him to make a choice: whether to continue working abroad or to stick it out here. Living life is a matter of making wise choices. The OFW who has seen it all lives better, and chooses well.

These are the kind of OFWs who relish a few days’ jaunt in our country, who must return again to where they must, for they have made the wise choice. Home is not always where they must go to rest their weary bodies and souls after toiling abroad; it is where they will return to enjoy the fruits of their labor, to decide whether to sally forth again, to thank our Creator for a choice well made and a life productively lived.

Merry Christmas to all.

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