Part 1: My Loving Filipina

When your nationality is more important than who you are…

You’re no more than the place from where you came from, you became part of a mass of nameless and faceless people. Your identity simply disappears.

That’s because we don’t care about your unique face, your name, your history, your family, we just don’t care if you sleep, eat, drink or enjoy yourself. You are here to work and when you finish the job there will only be more of it waiting for you.

You will be allowed to stay here for as long as you can make yourself useful and in return you will have one day off per week, after at least 12 worked hours per day plus a thousand money from here, approximately 270 $ per month. But it can be less and also your employer can reduce it, not pay it and even discount part of it from your salary if you don’t behave and dare to get a sick leave.

That’s it. Take it or leave it!

I’ve heard that some of them became prisoners. That they can’t get out of their employer’s house’s. In the beginning they’re promised one month holiday with a two way air ticket flight to their home country every two years, but they mostly end up working non stop for years. Some of them are given a few cans and some noodles for their meals, some eat their employers dishes leftovers, some are luckier and are allowed to eat whatever their employers eat, and others have a monthly food allowance.

These are the people here who take care of YOU, your house, your children, they are the people who smile kindly before serving you coffee in the morning, lunch at noon, tea in the afternoon, beer at happy hour, dinner in the evening and so many other fancy occasions where we can make ourselves pampered.

They are pretty much everywhere where you can see and even when you will get sick they will be the people that will take care for you at the hospital. They will most probably be the first kind face to smile to you or to your sick child. At all times they will help the doctors, but none of them will never get to be nobody’s doctor. That is just not for them. The line here is pretty much clear about who’s allowed to do what.

And if you’re planning on staying here, you’ll need to understand that:

You are the place from where you came from. And that place is the ground for everything that you’ll ever be. So if you came from the Philippines, you will serve us.

It takes just a little bit of curiosity!

If you are just a little curious you’ll find out that behind their kind smile most often there’s a heartbroken story of sacrifice, loneliness, hope, love (for their family and children) and an unbelievable kindness and honesty towards pretty much anyone.

I’ve been here for a couple years now and I’ve never been disrespected or treated in a hostile way by any person from the Philippines. Maybe that’s my lucky or maybe that’s just who they are: loving people, desperate people? I’ll never be sure.

Want some more juicy details?

There was this young lady that came to my place to be my full time maid and nanny, her name was *Lee, she was 24 years old, she had long dark hair, her hair smelled so good even from a certain distance, she was petite, slim, she had these big black eyes, I didn’t know why they were so cold and distant. There was something about her that I couldn’t figure. She rarely smiled and she always looked down.

One day we went for a walk at the Marina and I’ve said to her that I had learned in my life that everything changes.That good became not so good and sometimes even bad, and that bad becomes bearable and eventually good, and that sometimes bad could even become amazing fucxxxxing great!

I’ve told her that for me life is like being on ride in a giant wheel: when you’re at the top of it you feel amazing with the extraordinary view, you even dare to sort of feel like God for a few minutes, seeing everything and everyone. But when you’re down maybe you are only able to see what’s immediately in front of you and maybe that’s not a good thing to be seen.

The thing is that our lives are made of cycles. Cycles of good, bad, not so good, not so bad, super bad, super good, but in the end, all and each one of them won’t last forever.

As good or as bad our lives are right now, it will eventually come to an end and that’s the truth: the big wheel of life will turn and life will shift to a new cycle.

Unfortunately when I’m speaking in English I’m not very articulated and I can’t say things the way I think them. So I tried to say all this to her in a way that she could understand and get my point. We were walking looking to the sky, the amazing buildings alongside the marina and when I looked to her face her eyes were full of tears.

That day she told me that she had left in the Philippines her 2 years old daughter and her 6 month old baby. She had left them to work here and send the money to provide for them. At that time my baby was 6 months old and when I tried to imagine myself doing what she did my breath became short. Just the thought of that hypothetical idea was unbearable to me.

So I’ve had finally figured her eyes and I didn’t like it.

How ironic or how unfair it is for a mother to leave her child to take care of someone’s else’s?

That question made me think about love.

What kind of love is capable of leaving its dearest subject?

How much love it takes from a mother to leave her child because the best thing she can do will cost her that much?

It will cost her to not see her baby’s smile when she wakes up, not hug or kiss her when she’s sad, hurt or in pain, not see her growing up and so many other things that will be missed.

That’s because it is the only way this mother will be able to provide for her child and make sure that she will have everything she needs and maybe she’ll also help them to have a better future, at least one that’s different from hers.

Is there a conclusion?

I’m afraid that unfortunately there isn’t one. Sure that it might exist some exception here that I didn’t have the chance to contemplate. People from the Philippines being granted the opportunity to be managers, doctors, chiefs or anything else that their talent, instruction and hard work might get them doing. I want to believe in that exception existing somewhere here.

I’m European, I’m from the dominant color class, I look like wealth, I look like the colonizer from the old times. I came here by pure choice, because that was available to me and I choose it. I didn’t leave behind anything that I didn’t want to leave behind. The most important people in this world to me are just here: my husband and my son.

The randomness injustice of life put me in that place of choice, I’m aware about my luck and my privilege but this doesn’t bring me any happiness. I can’t close my eyes and pretend that I don’t see what’s going on here. And the truth is that pretty much anywhere where I’d look at, I’d find some heartbreaking truth.

You know what amazes me most?

That despite all the injustice and suffering, the most fragile people seem to be the kindest, with the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen.

My loving Filipina with my baby

*Lee isn’t her real name.