aysabaw.com

Life as an expat in Maldives, freediver and hotelier

Isa na namang OFW na napahamak

Hay! Hay! Hay!

Parang kakapost ko lang nung nakaraan ng The Country Training People to Leave kung saan binanggit ko na napaka-risky maging kasambahay lalo na sa Middle East pero hinihikayat pa rin ang ating mga kababayan para maging bagong bayani.

Ilang beses ko ng nakita sa newsfeed ko ang video na ito pero pinanood ko lang nung nakita ko na sa Inquirer eh. Kala ko hindi legit. Andami kasing mga video na hindi mo alam kung totoo eh.

Ok. So, ano na ngayon? Ilang Pilipina pa ba ang hahayaan niyong mapahamak at mapariwara o masahol ay mawalan pa ng buhay bago niyo maintindihan na hindi niyo na dapat pa sila hinihikayat magkasambahay lalo na sa Middle East.

Susme.

Wag niyo kasing ibaon sa mga bumbunan ng ating mga kababayan na pag naging kasambahay sila ay bayani na sila. Andami tuloy napapahamak. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.

*hindi ko po pag-aari ang video

aysabaw

April 9, 2015

kwentong OFW

29 responses to “Isa na namang OFW na napahamak”

renxkyoko

April 9, 2015 at 9:27 pm

That’s the problem when the government cannot help the plight of the citizens who are unemployed…. when politicians are corrupt and steal the money that is meant to help fellow Filipinos. I saw at Heathrow Airport in London Filipina nannies carrying MiddleEastern kids , and following the parents , llike servants, which they are of course…. but I think that’s enough already for all Filipinos. Even here in the US, if they need to show servants and nannies/caretakers , Filipinos are depicted as such. While the Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans Indians, etc are depicted here in the US as computer geniuses, scientists, doctors, businessmen, etc. Filipinoos are depicted as a group that can only wipe other people’s asses. It’s become quite embarrassing. We are very unhappy.

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1. aysabaw
  
  April 10, 2015 at 4:05 am
  
  It is. It is becoming quite embarrassing. But the problem here is, the people would always ‘hey, being a nanny is a decent job than being a thief.’ I mean, come on, there are other jobs more decent than wiping asses right? And I started to hate the statement ‘OFWs are heroes.’ Come on. Yes we are. We are branded as heroes because the more Filipinos are out, the more remittances come in and the more money the government can corrupt.
  
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ibbie

April 17, 2015 at 2:32 am

i work as a domestic worker abroad (20 yrs now) and i’ve known others who’ve started out as prostitutes because that was the only way for them to get out who are now working as cashiers at supermarkets or who own their own business. its not just the high level of unemployment that forces pinoys (or mostly pinays) abroad, it’s also the societal structure in the Pinas. Most of my acquaintances go abroad because of problems with the men in their family, either the jobless husband who refuses to assume responsibility for the family, the overambitious father who forces his expectations on the daughter, the lazy brother who’s becoming too much of a burden on the family. i’m talking about a generalization, to which there are of course exceptions. there are the seamen of course and a few young pinoys who go out first before taking their wives out. which is why it’s mostly women who are abroad.

why is the pinas the last country in the world where divorce is not legal? because the pinas is the last virtuous country on earth? don’t make me laugh.
or is it because millions of pinoys, politicians included, will then be legally forced tofinancially support their families in case the wife succeeds in divorcing?

so what if i’m a tsimay? i attend language courses where my classmates are managers of auditing companies, lawyers, nobody bats an eyelash when i say i’m a tsimay. that is exactly the problem of Filipino’s, lack of respect for manual labour and those who do it.

once, i had a pinay classmate, married to a local, she sort of sneered when i told her meat and veggies were freshest at the open market. well, she got put in her place when a spanish girl who worked at a bank said the same, and some weeks later the same spanish girl asked if anyone of any additional babysitiing jobs that she could do.

what about sharon cuneta, if i remember right, she said frankly in an interview that she used to act as companion to an old lady while she was in the states while she also took courses at university, and a friend tells me her daughter KC used to do petsitting while studying in paris. so one should be ashamed of them for that?

for those who’d rather respect ill-gotten wealth, your choice. i say bravo to all pinoys who do their best without having to trample on others to earn their living. knowing that the ratrace in the pinas can get very filthy, i’m glad to be out of the system.

i had a classmate who worked as a journalist who also has gone abroad now,( fortunately not to become a tsimay) she could hardly live on her income. she once told me that she once sent flowers to a pinay actress, i told her, what? that actress hasn’t even finished high school, you’re almost thru with your law studies, she should be the one sending you flowers.

perverted ang values sa pinas, importante ang appearances kaysa laman ng tao.

fortunately abroad (and i think even among individuals in the states, i’ve known lots of americans who have no problem socializing with tsimays even if they’re lawyers, etc) values are less ‘upside-down’ than kaysa pinas.

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1. renxkyoko
  
  April 17, 2015 at 8:22 am
  
  It’s unfortunate that class hierarchy is very pronounced in the Philippines, but its a myth that in the US, maids and lawyers freely socialize with each other. The ” professionals ” attitude towards people who do manual labor are not as open as how Filipinos treat domestic helpers in the Philippies but it’s till there, the looking down on the hired help.. That’s reality. It’s sad that teachers, and other female college graduates are forced to be domestics in other countries due to obvious financial reasons , but to actually establish Domestic training school is doubling down on the sad economic situation of the country. .
  
  And it’s not fair for you to say that we respect ill-gotten wealth. Where can you find a person anywhere in the world who does that ? We just lament the fact that the Philippines is now well -known as the source of domestic helpers, and no matter how we turn the world, that’s very troubling. The Philippines should do better than that for its itizens.
  
  having said that, I am happy that things have turned out well for you. But your success story is very few and far between. we can only hope that Filipno maids abroad will have a better life than what they had in the Philippines.
  
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ibbie

April 17, 2015 at 2:45 am

btw, if pinoys back home want to stop pinoys from going abroad, simple, they should just start paying people proper wages. starting with the maids, dressmakers, pedicab drivers, the labourers, pay them proper wages, register them in the social security system so that they have pensions to look forward to.

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1. aysabaw
  
  April 17, 2015 at 3:14 am
  
  hi ibbie! wow. parang puno ng angst?
  
  ‘so what if i’m a tsimay?’ – please, hindi namin minamaliit dito ang kapwa Pilipino natin na tsimay. What we are trying to say, and what I have written sa nauna kong post, bakit kailangang magkaroon ng eskwelahan na nagpopromote pa na maging tsimay ang mga kababayan natin?
  
  Saang bansa ka nga pala nakapagtrabaho? Nasubukan mo bang makapagtrabaho bilang tsimay sa Middle East? Kung naging kasambahay ka sa Middle East and hindi ka naabuso and you turned out to be a very successful person that you are, then bravo!
  
  What we are pointing out here is that, pilit nilang pinopromote ang pagkakasambahay sa Pinas at dito nila kadalasan pinapadala sa Middle East. At ang point don, napakalaki ng chances na maabuso ang mga kababayan dito. Kung saka-sakali lang na nabasa mo ang una kong post patungkol dito, madami akong binanggit doon.
  
  Hindi kami nambubuska dito sa post ko, please, don’t get us wrong.
  
  Wherever you are right now, we are happy for you and we respect you regardless of whether you are a tsimay or not.
  
  Thanks for reading and writing your valuable thoughts here. We really appreciate it. Sana lahat ng tsimay dito sa Middle East ay may kakayanan din na makapag-aral sa mga Language Schools tulad mo with their monthly income of AED 1000 / month (which is Php 10k – 11k, maybe a bit more or less) when one Language course is AED 1500 ++. And bago ang lahat, sana muna payagan sila ng mga amo nila na makalabas ng bahay para makapag-enroll. And btw, nasaang bansa ka na nga ba? Kasi kung nasa Europa ka na ang mga tsimay ay kumikita ng hundreds of thousands of pesos, I might as well just move there and be one. But kung dito ako magpapaka-tsimay sa Middle East at mga mapang-abuso ang amo ko sa halagang diyes mil, magtatanim na lang ako ng kamote sa Pilipinas.
  
  At sana tulad mo, swertehin din yung mga kabababayan nating kasambahay dito sa Middle East para mabawasan ang mga naabuso.
  
  PS
  ‘knowing that the ratrace in the pinas can get very filthy, i’m glad to be out of the system.’ – hindi namin gusto tumakas sa sistemang ito, gusto namin ng pagbabago. Ang pagtakas ko, o pagtakas mo sa sistema ay hindi makakatulong sa napakarami pa nating kababayan sa Pilipinas.
  
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Pinoy Abroad

April 17, 2015 at 12:19 pm

Dapat may “BOW” sa huli.. aysabaw! 🙂 chillax lng!

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1. aysabaw
  
  April 17, 2015 at 12:25 pm
  
  ha ha ha ha pasaway 😛
  
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  1. Pinoy Abroad
    
    April 17, 2015 at 12:28 pm
    
    ok lang yan..next post please! TAGALOG HA..Para hindi nya maintindihan..hehe.
    
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    1. aysabaw
      
      April 17, 2015 at 12:29 pm
      
      ha ha ha…Tagalog naman ang mga post ko kasi I can’t English. I’m panic. 😛
      
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ibbie

April 17, 2015 at 8:39 pm

hi to the blogger and renxkyoko,

thanks for reacting and i’d like to assure you mine was just a sincere reaction and not meant to be attacking your blog. nor to even say my case is a success story, far from it, it rankles my relatives too, which is probably why i insist on staying a maid, LOL. i do have relatives sa states and canada and no, they dont work as maids, not even as nurses all of them, but for some reason, i’m not (yet) convinced that i should follow in their heels.

sorry if i can’t address you by your name, and that i can’t express myself in tagalog, i was not a good student sa Pilipino class and my mother tongue is Bisaya (cebuano).

it’s good that you’re concerned about the fate of those maids sa Mid East, pero if they dont go out there, what would they do back home? the girl featured in your blog probably doesnt have any degree which would qualify her for anything else otherwise she’d have taken the chance, di ba?

pang-maid lang siguro ang qualifications niya, her parents probably didnt have the resources your parents had to send her to university (when will the blessed day come when the parents’ income will no longer determine whether a child in the Philippines can get the kind of education it wants? not in my lifetime probably).

Too bad if the quote regarding respect for ill-gotten wealth (i’ll just react to two comments na lang to save space) was interpreted as addressed to anyone in particular. it wasnt.

I’m not in the states, nasa maliit na bansa lang sa EU, kaya masabi ko lang ang sitwasyon dito. its not exactly as if lawyers and maids are gonna be best buddies, i dont seek it out either, i dont social-climb, am only talking about certain social events where they and maids happen to mix, but the ‘attitude’ towards maids, even compared to attitudes of pinoys towards theirs sa pinas, great difference talaga. am glad that my mother, tho we never could afford fulltime help, never authorized her kids to treat our household help as lower than ourselves.

may i just also lament the fact that in my experience a lot of those (again not referring to anyone in particular) who lament about the situation back home can only talk, but themselves further the same practices that discriminate against those who are born to the more modest families. take the example of pinays who i know who are maids here, when they go back home, do they try to make things better for their own household help? Ok, it’s wishful thinking to talk of all maids getting social security in the Phil, but most of those who go home will pay their domestic help the same salaries that are being paid by everyone else, they complain about people begging on the streets but would shoo these people away if asked for a few coins, and are only too glad if sollicited by corrupt politicians who once looked down them when they were still not foreign currency earners, etc.

Easy to talk about change, but do Pinoys really want it at the expense of their losing their own social/financial superiority to others? would they accept having their maids going to university and getting better jobs than their own kids on the basis of merit? In full honesty?

Just to cite an example, once we were in a shopping mall in the Philippines, and i stooped to pick something up to hand back to the supermarket handyman because it had fallen from the cart he was trying to manoeuvre, my relatives looked at me as if i had lost my mind whereas in the west or even in elsewhere in asia, i hope, its just a matter of reflex. But for them it was as if i’d lowered myself to the level of the handyman. because of course, no matter what the talk about social change, the situation in the Philippines, the divide between classes must be preserved at all costs. As a popular french comedian Gad Elmaleh summed it up correctly in one of his sketches when the supposedly immigrant upperclass lady in question found a working class student in the school where she was sending her own son – Je deteste la disorganisation social. (I hate social disorganization). LOL.

Back to blogger, dahil halo na ito, (hirap pag scatterbrained), regarding schools for maids, caregivers, etc, isn’t it that its really only those who cant afford college or university who go these schools? If they go abroad as maids, even in the Mid East fully knowing the abuses that others have experienced, its probably because staying in the Phil is not a viable option either. If not all university grads can get decent jobs back home, how much worse must it be for those who dont have degrees?

If the Philippine govt promotes going abroad no matter what, everyone knows its basically the country’s only source of foreign reserves, di ba? How many politicians actually have an ambition for their constituencies in addition to their personal ambitions?

I think the key to change lies in the advice of Pope Francis I when he visited the Philippines recently, the one that had talk shows here cracking in laughter because it was rather a bit awkwardly phrased (but which a lot of Pinoy commentary on his visit chose to ignore)-
“Only have as many kids as you can afford to bring up (decently?) and dont multiply like rabbits”. LOL.
To give credit to the Pope, i heard that he prefers to voice his own thoughts himself instead of having someone edit it for him, because for him, its more sincere that way:)

Of course being the pope, he’s not allowed to say outright that people may use contraceptives/condoms, but a popular French priest, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Gilbert) once openly declared on radio that if he thought that a rehabiltated girl ran the risk of an unwanted pregnancy again, he’d put her on the pill before she left his rehabilitation center. In countries that have been Catholic long before the Pinas became one, devout Catholics do use contraceptives.

Thing is, again, decrease in population means decrease in poverty, decrease in poverty means more independent-minded people, more independent-minded people is not what those who are against change in the Philippines want. There lies the real problem.

I’ve already influenced at least 4 people to have only the number of kids (or none) they can afford, i guess thats just gonna be my humble contribution to structural change in the Pinas.

Sorry for the space-taking reply, blame it to lack of editing skills.

more power to your blog. if i posted a comment in it, it’s because i thought there was merit in your own views, otherwise i wouldnt have bothered. and i still think there is merit in your blog and look forward to exploring it more, despite my Tagalog handicap, be reassured about it.

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1. aysabaw
  
  April 18, 2015 at 7:06 am
  
  Hi Ibbie,
  
  Thank you for toning down a bit. When I first read your comment I was slightly annoyed at the points you have given that though I believe was all correct, but are not at all in the slightest of the point of what I am trying to imply on to the readers.
  
  I take note of your success and congrats. I strongly agree that to be a maid is so much more honourable than to be a corrupt government official. I also note your examples of the Spanish lady and of KC Concepcion, doing part time babysitting and the likes and hey, why not? I’ve done part time cleaning as well when I was new in Dubai and so what? But being a part time maid or babysitter, especially in Europe or in America is totally different from being a full time stay-in maid here in the Middle East. I assure you, it’s totally different. I have seen a lot in almost a decade of living here and I have spoken to some and have listened to first-hand accounts of our kababayans here that are much more than just what we see on these videos that trend on social media. I have spoken to Filipinas here long time back when there’s no medium like social media to help them get out of their tragic situations. Some stories are almost unbelievable to the point that you will hate the agencies back home that brings maids to the Middle East.
  
  While I fully understand your sentiments and surely I honour our fellow Filipinos that work as maids, I also have my own reasons as to why I post such things.
  
  I also understand that in the States or in Europe they treat the maids equally or at least in a civilized manner, again, I reiterate, Middle East is different. I can also see that the Westerns treat the Filipina maids better than most of the’well-off’ Filipinos do. Have you seen the post about the ‘yaya meals in Balesin’ that made rounds in social media just recently?
  
  While I understand that maybe, these maids are here because that’s their only qualification or maybe they did not have the means to go to college, I don’t think that the government or whatever organization, should create a school for the maids. I mean, come on? At least they can think of something better than that? While the Westerns are trained in school to be managers some day, then we train our people to be maids one day? Come on. We can do better than that. I know that they risk their lives by coming here because they won’t probably earn anything back home but I don’t think it’s a good idea for the government to promote it. Granted that they can’t do anything to prevent it, at least don’t promote it.
  
  Yeah, easy to talk about change. I can just sit here and right about human rights blah blah, post it on my blog, log-out, switch my laptop off, go to Starbucks and have some frappuccino while reading a book sounds like a very nice life. I don’t know how far my post goes, I don’t know how many people have come across it or if anyone have read it but I hope, and I really do, that at least one reader, at least one reader would be able to understand how bad the situation is and try to tell it to one or two more people, then I am happy. At least one person, one moved by my post is good enough for me. Just like how you did on convincing four people about family planning right? You can’t create a drastic change in the nation but at least you tried and you succeeded. A tiny drop of water can create a ripple.
  
  And as to your sentiment of not using Tagalog, I understand. I grew up in Rizal but my father is an Ilonggo. So I know how the discrimination is when you have a Visayan accent. I tried to write in English but I would always go back to Tagalog because our language is just beautiful and there are some words and expressions that you just can’t translate in English and get the same feeling about it. Or maybe, my English isn’t just good enough.
  
  Thank you for reading my post as well as taking time to write down your thoughts on it.
  
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ibbie

April 17, 2015 at 9:18 pm

my apologies again for not using Tagalog (i just read your blog from the beginning and found your post, rather hard for me to read, explaining why you choose to express yourself in this language).
it’s just that Pilipino was taught in a very boring way, mostly grammar exercises, when i was in school. We never even explored Tagalog literature,( or any Pinoy literature for that matter) aside from the usual Jose Rizal stories. it may seem easy to you but its also a ‘foreign’ language for non-Tagalogs, for me at least. my Tagalog speaking friends usually tease Visayans as Visayantists because our accent is really different from Tagalog. not to mention that we didnt grow up with the vocabulary.
one of my best friends now is from Rizal province and only with her and her kababayans did i first realize how beautiful Tagalog expression can be, especially as she’s quite capable of expressing herself w/o using any English or Spanish word at all, unlike most pinoys.
Its out of respect for Tagalog that i’ve stopped using it, except as a spoken medium. I just don’t want to ”murder” your language, that’s all. If I did, my former Pilipino teacher would probably demand I go back to grade 1:).

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1. Pinoy Abroad
  
  April 18, 2015 at 5:36 am
  
  “Peace not War” why don’t we be friends..
  
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ibbie

April 19, 2015 at 7:19 pm

I understood (perhaps wrongly) your exasperation to be addressed to this particular girl and those like her ( and I hope her case has been dealt with, if not by the Phil govt, then at least by those who can manage to reach her). I thought, mistakenly probably, that it seemed to reflect a certain disdain for a certain class of OFW who go abroad without any qualifications. Which is why I thought it necessary to point things out from her point of view. I don’t know if you’re aware of it but there can be a lot of tsimay and pinays-married-to-Westerner bashing, and most of it, from what I see on the net and from what I’ve heard personally from youngsters I know, coming from your generation.

Just also forgot to react to your saying that a mentality like i’m-glad-to-be-out-the-system is not going to help the situation back home, well, Inday, if i may call you that, my generation did try. It was the youth of my generation who marched daily in EDSA, those of us in the provinces took part in the economic boycott of the Marcos cronies until Marcos was thrown out and this, I believe, was the main reason why the EDSA revolution succeeded. Don’t you confess yourself that your choice of studies was geared to working abroad because you had seen how an OFW relative of yours had been able to provide a decent upbringing to his kids?

To paraphrase what the Tagalogs say, you cant arrive anywhere if you dont know where you come from. Why don’t the youth of today question their parents, their grandparents, great-grandparents, to get an insight into how the country has arrived into the state it is in now.

Perhaps the youth should admit, that if the government is corrupt, it’s because society, in general is corrupt. If society is not egalitarian, perhaps it’s because the individual members of such a society do not themselves have egalitarian mentalities.

My cousin, while in Diliman, once told me that she had seen an anti-govt anti-corruption graffiti diatribe in the women’s toilet being answered by the following scrawled line: “If you were in their place, you’d do exactly the same thing.”

Hopefully for your generation, those who aspire to replace corrupt governments will not “do exactly the same thing” as we the older ones have seen for as long as we can remember.

P.S.
By the way, I also have relatives working in the middle east, both as employees and household workers. I think the main problem is lack of cultural understanding of the mores in the MidEast households, because a cousin of mine, probably better-schooled than the girl posted here, gets on fantastic with her employers. Though a Christian, she has let herself adopt to a certain extent the more conservative mindset of Middle East households, for so long as she is inside their home.

For as long as the economic situation in the Pinas doesn’t improve, schools for sending maids abroad will always find clients, and as far as I know, most of them are not government sponsored but privately owned.

Why not turn things to the maids’ advantage by asking these schools/agencies to provide their students with insights on the culture of the countries to which they send their girls? Pinays dont think much for example about addressing men first, but in the MidEast culture, perhaps addressing male members of the household first just to say ‘good morning’ can be interpreted negatively. They are in their own country and in their own homes, they have the right to their own mentalities in their own territory. Another friend who had been a maid also told me once that even the slightest hint of makeup on maids is not looked upon favorably.

I’m always struck by this lack of proper, if not cultural, at least, practical, briefing when I sometimes see newly-arrived seamen shivering at the busstop because their agencies never told them what the temperatures were like where they were going.

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1. Pinoy Abroad
  
  April 20, 2015 at 5:37 am
  
  Alright, enough with the politics.. tatanda kayo nyan! anyways atleast mahinahon na kayo 🙂
  ibbie how old are you?if its okay to ask..
  
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2. aysabaw
  
  April 26, 2015 at 2:50 pm
  
  Hi Ibbie,
  
  I don’t really get where this ‘tsimay and pinays-married-to-Westerner bashing,’ came from and I am sure that I am not one of those who bash Pinays who married foreigners, I know a few of them and I respect them.
  
  And as to your statement ‘Don’t you confess yourself that your choice of studies was geared to working abroad because you had seen how an OFW relative of yours had been able to provide a decent upbringing to his kids?’ – I think we are now far beyond what originally the topic here is, which is the maids that are sent to work in the Middle East. I am not against anyone who wants to work abroad. I am against sending Pinays to the Middle East to work as maids.
  
  Let me tell you something. Yesterday I met with few of my friends here and one of them is a nurse in one of the private hospitals. Just few days ago she came across a patient full of bruises all over her body. Huge ones on her arms and legs. She’s a Pinay maid, of course – no one else gets beaten as bad as that except for Pinay maids. She was also almost raped by the eldest son of her employers, and from the parents to the youngest kids, she can’t escape the beatings. After two days, the same Pinay came back. Her bruises hasn’t healed yet and now she has bruises on her neck, an evidence that someone tried to choke her to death. My friend and her Filipino colleagues asked her to run away and take a taxi from the hospital to the embassy but the maid is shit scared. She doesn’t have a phone as she was not allowed to have one and her passport was kept by her employers. My friend asked her superior if its possible to help but she was reprimanded for that. She was informed that they should not do anything else except treat the patients brought to them.
  
  Should this Pinay maid have come to the hospital pregnant without being married regardless of whether she was raped or it was due to an illicit affair, a police will be called. But when a badly beaten Pinay is brought by abusive employers, everyone turns a blind eye.
  
  Also one of my friends said that her colleague has a friend working as a maid but she doesn’t know the address of the house she was staying in. All their cellphones were confiscated by the employers but she have kept one and have always kept it inside her underwear. She used to call my friend’s colleague earlier that she wanted to escape but she won’t know where to go and whom to call. One of the other maids told the employers that she wanted to resign but she was beaten. My friend’s colleague tried to reach out to her these past few weeks but she couldn’t get a hold of her anymore.
  
  Ibbie, you being a chambermaid and all these cleaning and industrial courses in Europe, sounds bright and rosy but I will still stand firm on my belief that if we can’t totally stop sending Pinays to work as maids in the Middle East, at least they should try to lessen and that they should stop promoting it to our kababayans back home, at least. Your relatives here in the Middle East must be lucky to have nice employers. I’d rather stay back home and earn very little than get beaten by these ruthless people day and night and helplessly cry in the middle of the cold room not knowing what to do and worse come to worse go back home in a wooden box.
  
  Success stories are really great to hear but are usually one-off cases. These instances of abuse are much into our faces almost every day and there will be more beaten Pinays brought to the hospitals if we won’t prevent them from coming here.
  
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  1. Pinoy Abroad
    
    April 26, 2015 at 3:26 pm
    
    Hindi ba kayo matatapos? O gusto nyo sumama na lng tayo sa samahan ng pakikibaka? Ano ba mga ate!? 🙂
    
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    1. aysabaw
      
      April 26, 2015 at 4:03 pm
      
      kinuwento ko lang na kahapon lang ay may dalawang kwento na naman ng pang-aabuso dito. kaya hindi magbabago ang aking pananaw tungkol dito. 🙂
      
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ibbie

April 19, 2015 at 8:11 pm

About another part of your comment, courses for all professions, and yes, for maids, also exist here. I didn’t have to do it because I had already been a chambermaid, and had had my training on the job, but otherwise, everyone, locals included, do have to go thru the course, if they want to work as cleaners, and there are even several sections (house cleaning, hotel cleaning, industrial cleaning (for cleaning in factories), etc). After all, cleaning and being paid for it is different from cleaning one’s own place, it has to be done professionally as well.

The thing is only that, yes, here at least, manual labour is work just like any other kind of work, it’s paid reasonably, and it’s taxed just as heavily :). But most of all, society has evolved so that even those who do the ”dirty” work get paid, not just to be able to live decently, but also to enable themselves to have the same chances for the future as everyone else (more or less). Personally, in fact, I’d much rather have to go to a cheap lawyer than call the plumber, plumbers can be more expensive as one starts paying them from the moment they get into their car. I even wish a lot that I were I guy and knew how to drive, so that I could sign up for plumber training, no kidding.

But then again, the key is in the attitudes of individuals. European society has been completely inegalitarian in the past, much, much more than Pinas society, if one thinks of serfdom,etc but I think the reason why Westerners have their success is because they’re more aggressive about moving forward ( to the extent of having been the most agressive colonizers, of course, hehe), and they resist progressive thinking much, much less than Pinoys. The danger for the Pinas is not lagging behind the West, it’s lagging behind the whole world, it’s as simple as that.

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ibbie

May 1, 2015 at 4:33 am

aysabaw (for lack of a better name:) of course, you have the right to say the govt has to stop promoting jobs as maids, but as i said, is it the really the govt or simply unscrupulous private ‘agencies’ who promote these domestic jobs in the mideast. i certainly hope the govt is going to listen to appeals like yours, perhaps you should try to get the message to the officials concerned in the embassy, just as the maid you mentioned here should also.

if the discussion went beyond the original post, i guess its only normal because of subsequent comments that have been made and which i thought worthy of reacting to. its a reassuring sign of civilization, i guess, that we can carry on a discussion like this in a healthy way.:)

perhaps pinoys like you concerned with problems in the mideast should encourage the embassy to hold regular (monthly, weekly, fortnightly?) consultations about labor issues, especially with the maids, so that they can intervene before things get worse.

like this maid you mentioned, for ex, the very first time she encountered physical/sexual abuse, she should have gone immediately not just to friends but to the embassy. the embassy can deal with it on a more official and efficient manner with the mideast officials who could then talk to the household concerned. and the embassy can, of course, provide her with a passport even if the employees have confiscated her first one.

this is another thing that wont be related to the original post but perhaps to your blog, just dropped by because i found another pinay (Reiza Dejito) blog (of your generation) that might be interesting for people concerned with social issues, like you perhaps, and tho she didnt get involved in the philippines (hard to be a prophet in one’s own country, di ba?), she did get involved elsewhere (in Africa, to be specific) in a very constructive way:

i think to this day, she’s still active in the field, but with a higher function.

also dropped by because wanted to ask about package tours in dubai. our neighborhood grocer, who’s turkish, spent his honeymoon in dubai and the neighbouring emirates and he got an all-inclusive tour rather cheap, but when we checked it online, it was far more than he had got it for. would you know of any dubai or emirate websites or any way to book tours on the spot there instead of from here,(like local travel agencies there) as it might be more advantageous. hehe, sorry if its really off-subject, but it’s just easier to pick up the conversation from here:). and would you have any ideas about the local souks, like places to go for mid-east and south asian cuisine (not restos but more like the carenderia type, but the authentic ones, not fastfood chains). just fishing for tips in case you’d have some, no obligation of course:). i could ask my cousins but i’d have to go on fb, which i find too fussy. we can swap tips, if it should interest you. euro is really very low nowadays (its usually 60p but now its only 50), in case a euro tour would interest you, and prices might be cheaper here than there. just dont ask for ‘swanky tips’, not my cup of tea, if it hasnt been obvious already:).

pinoy abroad, i’m in my 50’s and no, you shouldnt ask women their age (i dont mind telling but its really not done, isnt it, especially in the visayan town where i come from). just dont try it with others, it really isnt done. not being mataray, just friendly advice:)

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1. aysabaw
  
  May 1, 2015 at 7:28 am
  
  ha ha ha ha…first of all, I was gonna react to Pinoy Abroad as to why he needs to ask your age as yes it is a bit impolite ha ha ha….
  
  2nd – on your comment as to why the abused maid didn’t go to the embassy? I would not want to comment on that because in the past, I have heard of stories that Pinays who ran to the consulate for help, were chased by her employers, grabbed her and dragged her out of our consulate (literal na kinaladkad) and no one dared help her when technically, once a Pinay (or any other nationality) should not be touched anymore by the employer once she have set foot on her embassy or consulate.
  
  Also, I had this personal experience of calling the embassy for an inquiry and after 20 (or more) calls on different times and days, I got lucky to get an answer from someone who was also on the rush to answer my questions and hang up. When I asked her why is it that no one picks up the phone calls in the embassy? She said they don’t have enough staff. I mean, my case is not an emergency. How about those who are in dire need of help?
  
  As to your question on Tours and Packages, there are a lot of local travel agencies that could give you packages, I will check and get back to you on this. But first I wanted to tell you about Asian Restos because I love food so I can tell something about this immediately.
  
  Betawi is an authentic Indonesian restaurant.
  
  Bentoya is a good Japanese Restaurant.
  
  And there’s a new Pinoy Restaurant here called Dampa which is a Seafood restaurant if in case you would like to have Pinoy food. I haven’t been there but its making a buzz.
  
  I can collate some info for you and maybe send it to your mail. 🙂
  
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2. aysabaw
  
  May 2, 2015 at 7:14 am
  
  Hello Ibbie, I got your most recent comment deleted but I don’t know how it happened 😦
  
  I think I must have clicked something while typing a response…grrrrrr
  
  Ha ha ha mataray nga ang friend mo. I’ve met Pinoy Abroad here in blogosphere he he
  
  I think I have your email add dahil nakikita ko ang mga email adds ng mga nagcocomment sa posts ko….I will send you some info once ready…hindi pa naman sobrang rush to no he he he…
  
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Pinoy Abroad

May 1, 2015 at 6:47 am

Okay madam, copy that! :)) nag nosebleed na po ako, konting english pa lang po yon! :)) salamat po.

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Pinoy Abroad

May 1, 2015 at 10:11 am

😦

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1. aysabaw
  
  May 1, 2015 at 10:48 am
  
  ha ha ha
  
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  1. Pinoy Abroad
    
    May 2, 2015 at 6:43 am
    
    :((
    
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AGE

August 16, 2016 at 2:59 pm

Grabe mga comment at discussion dito ah, hahaha. Isa lang masasabi ko walang basagan ng trip 🙂

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1. aysabaw
  
  August 16, 2016 at 3:09 pm
  
  wahahahhahahahahah
  
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