OFW blues
The send-off today, Oct. 13, 2011, wasn’t ceremonious or anything, just hugs at the airport and a couple of photos—we’re not an emotional or talkative family. Just like that, and my kuya, a physical therapist, was off to the United States, to become a full-fledged overseas Filipino worker, one among the millions of our country’s so-called modern-day heroes.
I always resented the term “modern-day hero.” Not because OFWs are not selfless and courageous—they are—but because the phrase seems to celebrate that which shouldn’t be celebrated: the fact that foreigners are benefiting from Filipinos’ hard-learned skills more than the Filipinos themselves, and that families are breaking up because economic hardships are forcing one or more of their members to work abroad. It’s like commending prostitutes aspiring to provide better lives for their loved ones, never mind the perils and indignities they expose themselves to. OFWs are in a situation which we shouldn’t be proud of and trumpet about, they’re in a situation that we should instead remedy. But, alas, our government seems to have given up on their situation. Why else would it celebrate OFW remittances as some great feat?
It has always intrigued me that “OFW” as an acronym has gone mainstream, while “OIW” and “OCW” for overseas Indian or Chinese workers, respectively, haven’t.
Also, it saddens me somehow that our Department of Foreign Affairs has become a sort of an outreach outpost for our distressed kababayans abroad, when our very talented Foreign Service Officers could do much better than just serve as outreach workers.
What gets me even more riled up is the fact that this exodus was supposed to be limited only to a generation. Our parents left the country to work abroad so we, their children, wouldn’t need to do the same.
That was the hope Dad had. He has been working abroad—in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and now the United States—since before I was born. He sacrificed his fatherhood so our family would live a comfortable life, but here now is my brother needing to follow in his footsteps. Dad is the most frugal person I know, and yet the family income still needs augmenting. If the OFW diaspora failed to economically empower a generation—my generation—so that it has still to resort to leaving home in search of a better life, then what was Dad’s sacrifice for? And if OFWs represent a middle class with enough money to send themselves abroad but still too poor to move up in the world, what is the fate of those living below the poverty line?
To be sure, Dad’s earnings helped put me through school. I never lost sight of that, even though I “lost” a father I could readily turn to for comfort.
People around me say grades or college degrees aren’t everything, they are to me. I think, by this measure, I have succeeded. Long ago, I have decided that I would not be the one to render Dad’s sacrifice in vain.
I also think I inherited Dad’s frugal nature, sometimes to a fault, my friends say. But I don’t care. I like the thought of having money saved up for a rainy day.
All these thoughts have made me realize Filipinos will continue to leave for greener pastures for as long as the pastures here in our country aren’t green enough, and OFWs will remain a crutch that the Philippines can very well use to prop itself up. This is partly the reason I decided to prepare myself for a career in Foreign Service. I want to make a difference (I hope, at 25, I’m not too old to dream!), to help reverse the “outflow” of OFWs. And I like to think that even if I can’t, I can help make things better by working hopefully in the DFA, for our country.
It’ll be a challenge for sure. I recently did a paper on OFWs and crisis management for one of my master’s degree in International Studies classes at UP Diliman, in light of the “Arab Spring,” the unrest in the Middle East that broke out this year. In a nutshell, I confirmed what has often been observed: that while the number of OFWs has ballooned in the last two decades, the resources and manpower to cater to their needs and interests have not. For starters, this has got to change. If there’s anyone that should step up to the modern-day-hero plate, it’s the government.
The next time I get to see my brother will be next year, when he comes home to get married. Dad might finally get his long-awaited homecoming, too, as he’s set to retire soon. It’s a little too late to salvage our father-son relationship, though. But I’m using my resurrected feelings of regret to swear that in my family, the OFW phenomenon stops at this generation. It has already gone one generation too long.
Jahzeel Abihail G. Cruz, 25, is a speechwriter at the Department of Tourism.
