Maid to be a Mother

“Are you going to leave?”

“I don’t know.”

“Just so you know, if you walk out these doors, I won’t be here when you come back. Your little sister and I are moving out so that you will never find us.” She looked at me with hurt in her eyes as I secretly desired for her to just let me go. Let me go ma…please let me go.

She left, came back with a letter in her hand. She stood outside my doorway and looked at me. I looked down at my feet.

"Are you going to leave?” Again, she asked, voice broken.

“I don’t know.” Lie. And she knew it without having to look into my eyes. Beside my feet she threw all the letters I wrote to her since I could write. They were all tied up in a ribbon, all except one.

“You’ve changed so much; I don’t even know you anymore!” And with those last words, she shut the door behind her and sobbed softly in her bedroom.

I picked up the letter scattered apart from the others. The moment I began to unfold the tattered piece of paper, I realized this was the very first letter I ever wrote to her, back when I was only six years old. Written with my tiny hand, it read:

“Mom, I would never want to marry because then I would have to leave you. I would never want to leave you.”

…I wept.

I was the very thing I warned the parents against their children during my visit to the CFO last month—Americanized. At age 17 I wished to leave my home not because I wanted to seek a job to be able to help out my struggling, single mother nor aid the family I left in the Philippines who are living in squatter areas with hardly any food on the table. I wanted to leave for selfish reasons—to be with my boyfriend at the time. What crushed me the most after reading the letter for my mother was my realization that I have turned my back away from my own family, from my own responsibilities, from my duty as a member of the Sison family. You see, my mother did the same exact thing I did. She left her family—but in her case, she left for all the right reasons.

The stark difference between America and the Philippines is that America is individualistic while the Philippines is collective in nature. Ironically, our family-oriented nature is the very thing that forces us to separate from them. We would rather sacrifice ourselves for the greater good of the whole family than pursue our dreams. My mother was 27 years old when she decided to go to America and become the breadwinner for her mother, her daughters, her nieces and nephews.

The day came when she was due to depart and I, along with my grandmother, wanted to ask her the same question she asked me: are you going to leave, us, your daughter, your mother, your home? But we didn’t because we knew that in order for us to survive, she had to go. It was the only way to sustain the family. But even knowing this, my grandmother turned to me and decided that we were going to run after her to the airport, to see her one last time before she would leave for a long time.

Mama giving me a hug before departing to my study abroad in the Philippines

In the airport we desperately searched for her among hundreds of people. She saw us, and like a scene in a Spanish soap opera, she ran towards my grandmother and I and hugged the both of us with tears building up in her eyes. I clung to her with all my might. And though I was only nine at the time I could feel that, unlike when I was 17, she genuinely didn’t want to leave.

My mother is not alone in this predicament. The article, “The Global Trade in Filipina Workers,” written by Grace Chang reveals that the global economic downfall has forced Filipina women to migrate in search for work, ranging from slavery to being sex slaves. About 46% of the women’s workforce in the Philippines is international and only 36% stay in the homeland. According to Chang, 70% of the 46% workers work as servants to upper class homes abroad. In her interviews with some of the workers, these women are subject to horrible conditions. Here are only a few: A whopping 88% receive psychological abuse including threats, name calling, insults; 38% are physically abused; up to 11% were sexually harassed or were attempted of being harassed; 60% don’t receive regular meals; 52% had no bedrooms and were forced to sleep in kitchens, bathroom or storerooms; 31% reported being imprisoned in their workplace; 91% worked for 17 hours straight without receiving any breaks. Last but not least, 81% of these workers receive payments lower than the agreed amount, averaging only $105.00 a month. What’s disgusting is that the agencies that send these women abroad romanticize the conditions abroad—telling them the economic opportunities while failing to mention the horrid work conditions. The Philippine president herself declared these women as the “new heroes of the Philippine economy” in 1988. Well why not? These women are exploited like modern day slaves yet they boost up the economy through their incredibly low wages. Of course they’re considered heroes.

Luckily, my mother never went through any of these horrid statistics that other women had to go through and still go through until today. She was assigned to care for an elder woman named, Lois, a dear, old lady that she was very amused by. A devoted Christian and a very respectful woman, she treated my mom just as anyone should treat a fellow human being. But not everyone gets the same treatment as my mother. What about those that report of being physically and mentally abused? What are the authorities doing to those families that are responsible for those crimes? Do these women ever receive justice or do they become just another statistics?

In the case of Teresita Tristan, her passport was forcefully taken from her and instead of the promised $400.00 a month wage, she was paid only $108.00. The family that she worked for treated her like a dog, only allowing her to eat left overs on top of her not being allowed to eat from their plates. It outrages me how anyone could treat anyone like this, regardless of their social class or ethnicity. What’s sad is that even though they receive mal-treatments, they would rather still stay where they are at so that they can send money to their families in the Philippines. The abuse abroad doesn’t compare to the starvation they will have to face once they return home with nothing. These women are heroes, yes, but not for the reason that Aquino declares. These women are heroes because they save lives everyday by sending back most of their wages, no matter how bad they are treated or how low they are paid.

Organizations such as INTERCEDE, Kalayaan, and SEIU are working hard to fight for the rights of these women abroad while other organizations are fighting in the homeland to open up the government’s eyes on the impact that these women are making both abroad and back home. But we can’t rely fully on these organizations. We must do something as a nation to improve our economy so that leaving to another country becomes an options and not a necessity.

“Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers and the International Division of Reproductive Labor,” by Rhacel Parrenas explores the reasons and effects of the “three-tier” cycle of migrant Filipinas. The reason is obvious: Philippine wage is just not enough to support a family. In more than 130 countries, mainly in Italy and the United States, Filipinas find domestic work for low wage, often times with no benefits. The shocking thing that I learned is that many of these women that go abroad to become domestic workers have high education and or used to work as professionals. According to Parrenas’ research, these women working abroad get paid on average of $1,229. Compare that to the average salary of a worker in the Philippines, earning $179.00 a month. It’s no wonder why many tolerate the physical and psychological abuse. Even pride goes out the window for many of these workers abroad.

Carmen Ronquillo said: When coming here, I mentally surrendered myself and forced my pride away from me to prepare myself. When performing tasks way below her education and abilities, she said: So, sometimes I would just cry. I felt like I was slapped in the face. I resent the fact that we cannot use our skills especially because most of us Filipinos here are professionals. We should be able to do other kinds of work because if you only do housework, your brain deteriorates. Your knowledge deteriorates. Your whole being is that of a maid.

Beyond the abuse, beyond the low wages, beyond the pride deterioration, another thing haunts these women working abroad—leaving their own children to take care of the ones who are not their own. Parrenas further states that the women are “plagued by the pain of family separation.” I can personally relate to this since I’ve been there myself. When my mom left to the states to support us, I was emotionally unstable. Many nights I would cry for my mom to come back but she couldn’t hear me. I waited for her rare telephone calls eagerly and would begin to tell her how much I have missed her but then she’d have to hang up because the bill would get too high. The suffering goes both ways. It affects the ones who leave and those they leave behind. But most of us are given no other choice. We press on with loneliness and suffering for the sake of surviving, hoping that one day it will be better.

For me, it did become better. Just a few years later, my mom came back for me and took me with her to the states where I am now furthering my education in one of the top schools in the world. She doesn’t work as a caregiver any longer but she still manages to support my family here in the Philippines even with our financial situation. I can only hope the same will go for the women who dutifully sacrificed their happiness, their lives, just so they can support their love ones back home.

The sad reality is that this whole process will only keep on rising. As the first world and second world countries become more advanced, the women in the third world countries will be the ones to call on to do the dirty work. We can’t complain either because we are much better off cleaning toilets in other houses than be professionals in our own country. The dreams of Filipina women will forever be buried in the back of their minds as they aid to fulfill the dreams of the foreigners. The least we can do is uplift them, let them know that we appreciate their sacrifices and their hard work. It is times like these when I realize how lucky I am to have a mom like I do. To have her is to have the whole world. I will be forever grateful to her.

Next time she ask if I’m going to leave, I want to say, “Yes,” proudly. But this time, I’m leaving because it’s my turn to give her the life she has always dreamed of.

Mom, happy as can be :)