What’s a happy Christmas for OFWs?

What’s a happy Christmas for OFWs?

By Petronila Galicia Cleto

Author, right, and her caregiver interviewees

The years abroad for a migrant worker – can their quality be summarized in the Christmases of every year? Particularly for the Filipino abroad, she or he who has the fondest memories of the holiday season and the Christian rituals and traditional good cheer in the home and among family members, the basis of comparison would be strong, and serve as a fine sieve through which memories of Christmases abroad would be like.

But straight away, there would also be a fine definition of what happiness is. What would compare indeed with all the sounds, smells and the company of loved ones at Christmas in the homeland where one was born and grew into society, which would always mean a solid meaning of happiness for the Filipino?

Yan, formally known as Marian Caberoy, decided that her Christmas in Hong Kong where she had many friends, some 15 or 20, was best so far in all her 14 years abroad. She remembers fondly the beach where she would spend the whole day of the 25th partying with her friends. The beach-owner was a Filipino named Leo, who also owned a bar in HK, and was well known to his many Filipino clients as a good-humoured guy who would allow them to party on his beach for free!

This is Yan’s first year in Canada, and comments that she would have been stranded here on Christmas, all alone, if she didn’t have the good fortune of joining an organization (Philippine Migrants of Barrie) and finding new friends. In HK, it was easier for her to find friends – “The very moment I go out of my employer’s house, I can bump into all the Filipinos I want and become friends!” And this is her Christmas happiness, and the happiness of every day, in sum – to be with many friends her age. Of course, she said, she could still be happy although alone and overcome her loneliness by herself, recalling the love she experienced and still enjoys from her family and friends in General Santos, but then it would be much easier if she had friends!

Let us call her Ms. Smiley, because she had earrings with Smiley’s printed on them and didn’t want her name to be in the papers. She immediately sighs: not one Christmas abroad! Perhaps this year? Even while she was in HK, she said, there was no chance at all of her having a Merry Christmas, because her employers didn’t observe the Christian Christmas rites, and even had a New Year during February’s New Year, when it was coldest!

So in HK, she would sleep the Christmas season away. “I couldn’t even call at 11 p.m. for Christmas eve greetings, because it would be too late, and had to call home earlier in the day.” But now, having Filipino friends again in Canada, she hopes she can have a good and proper observation of Christmas. “A real Noche Buena with friends, with pancit, dinakdakan, bibingka, agar-agar! It’s very lonely here in Canada, and I really need friends. A boyfriend too, is good, but you know, I don’t want a serious relationship yet, because I know that I just need friends at this time when I’m very lonely and adjusting to so many things.”

Now Jane Quidolit has another way of looking at happiness. Although she has her two sisters with her here in Canada, as well as her mother, she definitely says she has had no real happiness at Christmas abroad so far. Her family members live with her in a boarding house, and they have just been trying to enjoy the holidays this year. “I’m not used to the cold yet. I arrived only three months ago, and it’s still difficult for me.”

Jane was also in HK previously, and blurring her happiness in arriving in Canada was the fact that she had difficulties entering Canada. There was a confusion about what her real name was. From the grades to college, she was enrolled as Jeannie. Her birth certificate shows her name as Jane. The National Census in the Philippines couldn’t find her on its list, and it turned out she was actually listed as Jean! She had to spend a lot of money to fix this problem, as would be expected. It didn’t seem like a nice prelude to a happy year in Canada!

The best thing that she considers as somewhat close to happiness while she was abroad, was her giving birth to a daughter in HK, but that was in April 2008. She brought home her child in June, so her happy Christmas that year was still in spent in the Philippines!

Rose Vasquez Pira is the only one among the batch of women-interviewees who exclaims that in 2008, she was gifted with her first wonderful Christmas abroad. Her story is spectacular. In October 2008, she sent her Permanent Residence application to the Canadian consulate, and, upon the advice of her relative in Canada, she also sent an email letter. “I wrote that I wished that Christmas of 2008 would be the best Christmas she would have abroad, so that I would be with my family again here in Canada: her husband Vincent, and her two children – Donaire, 18, female, and Hrothgar, 10, male. And then I wrote as a P.S.: Thank you very much!” She scanned the letter and her PR application and emailed both to the Canadian consulate in the Philippines. She got a quick reply, and by December 20 that year, her family was with her! The following Christmas of Rose and her family was nearly as good: they were able to get a house, facilitated by the aunt who co-signed the papers for the house!

The only male interviewee, who I also have to decline to name, has quite the opposite experience…or is it non-experience…of Christmas abroad. A temporary worker in Canada, but not within the Live-in-Caregiver program, and therefore has more difficulties getting Permanent Residency, he says straightforwardly that there is no Christmas without one’s family. That could be seen as a standard view, but then there are details to his story that makes it more dramatic than the usual.

He has a son in the Philippines, whom he hasn’t seen for 9 years. He also hasn’t been able to even contact him by phone, mail or email, since the boy’s mother doesn’t allow any communication between them. The grandmother, the mother’s mother, has also been against her daughter’s marriage to him, and the development into the present conditions was not at all helped by my interviewee’s commitment to his union in the Philippines and his continued involvement in helping Filipino workers in the Canadian community.

Not completely understanding why this dynamics has happened in his family, I asked him what his wife’s occupation was. She is a social worker. It completely floored me.

“Christmas is for children,” my interviewee muttered. “An absolutely merry Christmas is for the wealthy.”

What is Christmas for you?