Vagabonds

In my travels abroad, I have noticed that Filipinos, even those who are strangers to each other, find it easy to click. One time while boarding a flight to Paris, a manong who was maybe in his 50s, called me “kabayan” and asked me a lot of questions. On a budget airline flying back to Manila from Bangkok, I was seated next to a nice but extremely talkative lady who asked me everything about my family and gave me all sorts of advice about relationships, studies and jobs. Then before we landed, she pitched various low-cost properties she was selling near my place. So I have learned that to be lulled to sleep by the drone of the engine is a luxury.

Perhaps I should not complain.  It might simply be in my personality to entertain and be entertained.  But to be honest about it, most of the conversations I had with Filipinos on an airplane were never entertaining.

Redgie was my seatmate on a recent trip to Mexico, where he was going to join his cargo ship. As an ordinary crew member, he was not excited about the work awaiting him: scrubbing the floor, repainting the deck and securing cargos. These tasks were not really difficult according to Redgie, who seemed to be much younger and frailer than I. What was difficult was dealing with different personalities on board the ship. For example, when he was just starting on the job, he could not understand why his supervisor treated him like a dog for a mistake he could have easily avoided if only he had had been informed about it. So for the rest of his first contract, he tried to avoid his supervisor as much as possible, and especially after work.

With regard to his Filipino co-workers, Redgie was candid in saying that they were more gossipy than women. Apparently, he was the subject of some vicious gossips as a young crew member.

What made this particular flight even more difficult, he said, was the fact that he left behind a wife who was two months pregnant.  By the time he came home, he mused, she would have given birth to their first child. He could only wish he could be with his wife when she went to the hospital, but then his contract did not give him that privilege. He said he was hoping that this new ship would have Internet access so he could talk to her on skype every day.

It did not help that most of the time on board ship, all he could see was the endless sea—no mall, no park, not even a church to visit.  He said he could understood why some seamen committed suicide while at sea.

“Yan ang buhay marino, Jay,” he concluded. “Ngayon mo lang nalaman ano?”

There was really little I could say to him.

On a flight to Manila during one Christmas season, I was seated next to a domestic helper who had been working in Singapore for at least 12 years.  It was her first trip home.

Ate Mary was one of the most endearing persons I had ever met. Petite and in her early 40s, she spoke in a very cool manner although I could sense that she had many hang-ups in life. She asked me questions about my life and was delighted to know I was a postgraduate scholar in Singapore.

Her eyes showed her excitement over coming home for Christmas, but she also had some apprehensions.  I didn’t ask her, but she took the liberty of recounting the hardships she encountered with some of her previous employers in Singapore. She also told me that her husband was looking forward to throwing a grand welcome party for her, and she had to restrain him saying: “Baka naman iniisip mo na malaki ang dala ko.  P20,000 lang ito. Gusto ko lang makita ang anak natin.”

Knowing how little she had been able to save made me feel terribly guilty when she offered to buy me some snacks on board the plane. I was planning to pay for our snacks but she beat me to it. Then I remembered what a friend had told me: If domestic helpers offer you something, do not decline because that is one of the very few things that make them feel important.

When we arrived at Clark Airport, Ate Mary was warmly welcomed by a whole battalion of relatives. She introduced me to her husband, their son, and many members of their extended family who were crammed inside a long jeepney.

“Kung alam lang nila, Jay,” she whispered. It was December but the festive mood could not flush out her anxieties.  Right there I knew that one day I would have to write stories like hers and be her voice.

As a sociologist, and above all as a fellow sojourner, I believe it is my responsibility to tell the stories other people may not know. I often do this in the classroom and now I am doing it through Youngblood. Hailing OFWs as modern-day heroes often amounts to mere celebratory rhetoric that regrettably masks their suffering.

Of course, many of us are aware of the hardships they endure. In fact, we have movies that reveal this reality like “Anak,” “Milan,” “Dubai” and “Caregiver.”  But celebrating their so-called achievements abroad can be misleading.  The grand welcome given to them as balikbayans, the all-important ritual of shopping in duty-free shops, and even their own compulsion to demonstrate their success by constructing grand houses and wearing flashy jewelry are just a smokescreen to hide the loneliness and pain they suffer in faraway lands.  Amid such celebration and ostentation, who would even think about their pain?

Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish sociologist who was forced to move constantly during World War II because he was a Jew, has said that there are two kinds of travelers today: the tourist and the vagabond. In contrast to the tourist whose greatest aspiration is to experience the exotic, the vagabond’s mobility is forced upon him by social and economic forces. Although he was writing about the experience of refugees, Bauman could very well have been talking about our OFWs as modern-day vagabonds. An OFW’s stay in another country is contingent on his or her utility to a wealthy employer, who may be oblivious to his or her longings and suffering.

But these are just some of the issues faced by our own vagabonds, and those of us who are here in the Philippines may not be aware of them. Redgie, Ate Mary, and the many others whose stories I had the privilege of hearing assumed that I did not know their pain and their loneliness. “Ngayon mo lang nalaman ano?” as Redgie put it.

But that isn’t true. My father was himself a seaman.

Jayeel Serrano Cornelio, PhD, 29, earned his PhD in sociology at the National University of Singapore and now teaches at the Ateneo de Manila University. He is president of the Academy of Jesus, a small non-profit Christian school in Las Piñas City.