By Fr. Edwin Corros, CS, on December 27th, 2012
Different
shapes of plastic containers, some square, mostly rectangle and oval,
containing varied Filipino delicacies were lying on top of the concrete
table. There were the usual Filipino favorites like pancit bihon,
chicken-pork adobo, menudo, lumpiang shanghai, laing, escabecheng
tilapia that looked so orange with banana catsup, and the buko salad
with lots of green shredded jelly. There were also canned soft drinks
and rice cake called biko. It was especially ordered by Esper from Aling
Magda of Won-Won a few months back.
Soon, the guests started to arrive one by one on that mid-morning
spring. They all gathered in a park, surrounded by very green ornamental
plants.
Flora, Esper’s closest friend, went to this park soon after attending
the earliest morning mass at a nearby church to make sure they were
able to reserve the place for the birthday party.
They occupied the bench positioned next to one of the few tables
provided by city park administrators. The tables and chairs made of
cement were probably meant for a family or for a group of friends who
might like to spend time in the park in order to bond, like Esper’s
group.
There was also Merced who came along with Flora on that still cold
April day, with the sun shining over them, as they carefully arranged
the food on the table.
Anticipating a sunny day, they had chosen the area close to the trees
to have adequate shade for the birthday bash of Esper who had just
turned 40. Her birthday actually happened five days ago, but as is the
case of most overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) around the world, Esper
could not usually go out on weekdays for a day off. She had to wait for
Sunday in order to celebrate her birthday with friends in Taipei.
“It is always good to have a lot of friends in a place where you do
not know anyone,” she once told me. “Sometimes, they truly become one’s
family in a foreign land. Besides we know more or less the kind of work
that each of us do and we also learn a lot from each other,” she
declared.
Earlier, Esper, who likewise attended the first mass at the St.
Christopher’s church, the most famous church among Filipinos in Taipei,
had to pick up some of the food she ordered for her birthday. She was
smiling at every friend who came to greet her. Probably influenced by
the Chinese tradition, she was dressed in red and looked so unusually
radiant. Esper looked so much different that day. She did not want to
think of her work but only of her belated birthday celebration in the
park.
She was very excited. “Happy birthday, Esper!” greeted everyone who
arrived for the bash. “You look so gorgeous today! I love your dress,”
some guests greeted her.
Merced was just so happy to take pictures of every friend who came to
greet Esper. Most of them had just come from the church, too. There was
a lot of laughter, as if the park was exclusively reserved for their
affair. The bench was not enough for the 14 OFWs who were mostly
standing around their banquet table. There was a lot of food for the
whole barkada and Tonia was quick in suggesting to have early dinner at
the park, too.
They wanted to spend the whole day at the park if not for the
unexpected rain. Besides, Esper promised to return to the church to
serve as an usherette. “That’s a blessing!” remarked Tonia, referring to the rain. She was the most boisterous among her friends. She was the one who
insisted last week that I join them at the park after my 10:30 in the
morning mass. It was Tonia who recounted to me how they had planned the
party to make Esper happy at least for that Sunday.
Esper was one of those parishioners who had become very close to me
as she served as usherette in the church almost the whole day every
Sunday. For a change, she asked me if I could allow her to skip her
commitment that Sunday in greeting and ushering church goers as part of
her
job as a member of the hospitality ministry at the parish, but she also promised to assist at the last mass in the evening.
It looked like her friends were successful in making Esper happy that
Sunday. After all, she is one person who was easy to please. She seemed
very honest too with her true sentiments especially when she had a
problem. She was very emotional. She laughs without control, and she
cries when needed. I witnessed those moments several times at the prayer
meeting of the charismatic group, where she was also a member.
When I arrived at the park, the laughter had ceased momentarily
because I told them that I need to go back to the church for my next
mass or probably they did not expect me to take time to greet them.
Immediately, I invited her friends to pray with me for Esper, who
started to appear teary eyed. My prayer was followed by saying the grace
after which I invited everyone to attack the food lying on the small
concrete table. That was my way of making them feel at ease with my
presence. The laughter continued and the picture taking, too.
I noticed there were Taiwanese in the nearby tables observing us
while others were just busy doing their own business in the park. Not
far away were other groups of Filipinos congregating in the park. Some
were dancing, apparently rehearsing for a number, while others were
simply having fun at the park. Just like the group of Esper, other
OFW groups in that park had probably experienced brief liberation from a whole week of hard work.
In between the picture taking, Esper wanted me to take a bite, but I
told her to share with me only the biko. She immediately cut a slice of
biko but I refused to bring it along and insisted that she only send me
some should there be left over. As their pastor, it was part of my
responsibility to share their joy even by merely visiting them in the
park on Sunday.
Esper was so contented to see me visiting her with her friends.
Beaming with pride, she started to introduce me to the rest of the group
whose names I could not all remember, except for Tonia and Flora who
were also active volunteers at the various ministries in the parish.
Happiness was painted all over Esper as she least expected me to spare
time for her birthday celebration at the park.
Esper is one OFW that I could never forget among the many
parishioners who had actively volunteered in the parish. If one has to
make a movie, her story would be a mine for dramatic highlights.
One Sunday, on a winter morning, I saw her seated at the lobby of the
St. Christopher’s Church wearing sunglasses which seemed rather
strange. She never wore sunglasses inside the church. She immediately
stood up to approach me and asked if I have time to listen to her.
It was customary for me to walk around the parish in between my
Sunday masses and meetings to check or monitor the surroundings of the
church. I even made it a habit to check on the toilets if they were
clean and not smelly. To me, it is not just the church which should be
clean, but also its facilities. Such habit of checking the toilet was
part of keeping the church service upgraded. I would instantly ask the
janitress to clean the toilet if they had become messy.
It was in fact through one of those regular checks that I discovered
and was able to confirm that some OFWs were taking illegal drugs. I
accidentally saw a lighter, an aluminum foil and a straw left behind
lying on the small window in one of the toilets. These items are used in taking shabu. Shabu is methamphetamine
hydrochloride and is common among Filipino illicit drug users.
When I shared that discovery with the parishioners, several OFWs came
to confirm that they knew many OFWs who were actually users of the
prohibited drug. Drug addicts had probably used the church in their drug
transactions, as they could remain anonymous there because on Sundays,
the place becomes inundated by churchgoers.
Once inside the toilet cubicle, nobody would know what one was doing
in private, including taking prohibited drugs. One very young
parishioner who claimed to be a former drug user told me that by merely
looking at the eyes of our parishioners, he could immediately identify
who among them is a drug user. He disclosed further that some of the
OFWs working in the factories were encouraged to take the illegal drugs
in order to stay awake when company owners request them to do overtime
jobs. The poor OFWs were obliged to render at times up to eight or
twelve hours of overtime work when production demands became high. Such
overtime job exposes them highly to accidents. I have met some OFWs who
came to our parish who had lost limbs, hand, and fingers. The accidents,
according to them, happened because they were too tired in their jobs
and had failed to secure themselves from the dangerous machine that they
were operating.
It was in the ladies’ toilet that I uncovered another shocking story in the parish while working there as parish priest. In one usual round that I took one humid summer afternoon, I noticed
the toilet bowl covered but soiled with fresh blood. The smell of the
blood was strongly fetid and immediately I started to think that the
last lady to use it was rather very untidy and had no respect for others
who would be using the toilet next.
With my right foot, I slowly opened the bowl and checked the extent
of the blood spill that was inside before flushing it but I was
surprised that it was rather clean. I then traced the source of the
blood and discovered a lacerated fetus lying among the napkins and
toilet papers inside the trash bin. I shivered upon such discovery. Even
our parish was never spared by someone who had aborted a baby. One
parishioner commented that the person who did it was a criminal.
Such discovery confirmed the reports alleged by Filipino-Chinese
doctors working in hospitals that many OFWs were submitting themselves
to abortion. Of course, forced by their employers in exchange of keeping
their jobs, abortion was common among women OFWs. That was enough
reason to lobby the Taiwanese government legislators not to use
pregnancy as a reason for job termination to which they obliged.
But let me go back to Esper’s interesting story. Besides working for
several years in Taipei, she had also disclosed several funny stories
about her love life. There was Efren to whom she was introduced through text by a common
friend in Manila. They became text mates. Efren, according to Esper,
courted her via long distance. He was from Baguio but worked in Manila
as a factory worker. Younger than she, he was in his mid-thirties but
has never been married.
Esper claimed that Efren accepted her, knowing that she is a widow
with three children. Her husband died early. She told me that it was
better that way. He left her only with three children otherwise it might
have been more difficult to send them to college if they had more than
three children.
It was Esper who would call Efren, because it was a lot cheaper to
call to Manila from Taiwan. According to Esper, she fell in love with
Efren’s thoughtfulness because he was sending her text messages almost
every week without missing a single Sunday. That love changed when Esper
finally met him in person.
In one of her vacations in the Philippines, Esper finally met Efren
to verify if indeed he was the Efren she had come to know through long
distance calls and a picture he sent her. She revealed that they checked
in at one of the motels in Pasay. I was dumbfounded by such disclosure
at first, but pretended not to be in order to listen to her usual vivid
narration. She said that she was so disappointed by Efren’s incapacity
to have an erection for the longest time when they stayed at the motel
in Pasay.
After that encounter she never contacted him again after she had
returned to Taipei. She changed her mobile phone number and declared
their love affair closed. That way, she said, “I am telling him that I
am no longer interested.” I told her that she was only interested in
sex, and we both started to laugh. When I told her that what she did was
wrong, she justified herself by saying that she only wanted to be happy
the second time around.
Some of her friends in the church ministry of hospitality tell us
that whenever they saw us talking in private, Esper must be having a
problem again. We just smile at such remarks. Esper’s stories were in
fact full of moral lessons.
Esper is petite in height and I sometimes wonder how she could
attract men as she looked a bit corpulent and dark. Her parents were
from Negros Occidental. According to her, they migrated to General
Santos and it was there where she was born and grew up. They are very
poor people, she claimed, and was very grateful to have left the country
and found job in Taipei where she earned quite good. She had been in
Taipei for six years and had been relatively lucky to have employers who
were not abusive, except for the current one.
She recounted to me the sexual attempts made by her current male
employer when she was once alone in the house one summer afternoon. Mr.
Chen, her male employer, had stolen a kiss from her when he was once
drunk. She let it pass as she claimed he was drunk. But when he got
drunk again, he attempted to embrace her and Esper pushed him hard.
Jokingly, Esper told me that she could have been happy to submit to his
attempts if not for his mouth which smelled so bad.
“I could not take his very bad breath, Father,” Esper had smilingly
divulged in one of those small talks we had outside the church. “He’s
not that old, but his mouth is reddish and he smokes a lot, too,” she
added.
Like some Taiwanese men, Mr. Chen chewed betel nut. Luckily, he was
very drunk that time when Esper pushed him hard. He lost his balance and
that gave Esper enough time to quickly run inside her room and lock
herself in. He followed her, but she did not open the door.nI told her to be careful or probably find a way to report the
incident to her broker or to the police but she just shrugged it off,
probably thinking that she could not trust her broker as well. She promised though to be always cautious in dealing with her male
employer. She defended him however, saying that he is very sweet when
not drunk.
Small stories from Esper made me become very familiar with her
background. She was one OFW who can easily make friends and is also easy
to deal with. My first meeting with her was when she asked me if I was
an Ilonggo to which I answered no.
“I am Hiligaynon,” I told her to her amazement because I started already conversing with her using the Ilonggo language. She immediately trusted me after that first meeting and shared so
many personal stories of her life. Moreover, she also reported to me
anything untoward happening at the lobby, inside or around the church
before she reported them to her coordinator. She was a very reliable
parish volunteer.
Based on the many meetings I had with her, it was a different Esper
who approached me that one winter morning. I noticed that her eyes were
swollen especially when she took off her sunglasses. It was strange to
see her wearing sunglasses inside the church, especially at the lobby.
But she was always funny or she must really have a problem, I thought.
“How much time do you need for this story?” I asked Esper. She
replied, “Maybe longer than usual. I have a very big problem Father,”
she started. “My son has been accused of rape,” she added. “He just
recently turned fourteen. We had just celebrated his birthday when I was
on vacation with them,” she continued to justify. “The woman who accused him of rape is already 19 years old,”
she said looking at me straight in the eye. “She’s older and the family
is now suing us.”
“How could that be, he is only a child?” I protested. He also has
rights. He needed to be assisted by the police or by the Department of
Social Welfare and Development. Esper was crying even more as she continued to narrate the news she
received from her father. I could see her frustration and confusion. She
said she wanted to go home to General Santos, but she had just arrived
from her holidays. She is at a loss. She is so worried that her son
might be imprisoned. She likewise had confused me with such news when I
knew that she has just come back from her vacation with her family and
could have sensed some problems while she was with them. We retreated
away from the church lobby so as not to attract the attention of the
parishioners who were entering the church.
Being relatively familiar with her, I made an effort to ask more
questions as I could not easily understand the situation even if I have
in the past heard so many tragic stories about her family.
Apparently, Esper’s monthly
remittance
has always been a source of trouble for her family. She once made her
father the designated recipient of her salary through the bank but that
arrangement was withdrawn after a year when her children started to
complain that they were not given their allowances as earlier agreed.
She discovered that the remittance was instead shared by his father with
her other siblings in need of help.
They kept borrowing money from her father who could not say no to them. She complained that her children who were attending
Catholic
schools were denied support by her father. She was very mad when she
learned that all the remittances she sent were enjoyed mostly by her
other siblings and little was practically left for her very own
children. Her siblings got mad at her when she changed the beneficiary
of her remittance.
With the help of a very caring cousin, she was able to save some
money to buy a tricycle which had served as her children’s service
vehicle to and from school when not used as a public utility transport.
“That seemed very positive,” I told Esper with admiration. “Not at
all, Father,” she protested. “My two daughters were raped by our
tricycle driver one after the other,” she bemoaned.
“It was done inside the tricycle!”
This story had taken me aback. “What can I do? I am so far away and I trusted people whom I thought
could help us,” she said. “The person who did those horrendous acts is a
relative,” she confessed. I had high regard for Esper because of her tough disposition after
recounting to me that story last summer. In fact, she has always been a
subject of my little moments with the Lord.
For a long while, I had kept her in my prayer, especially her two
daughters, that they too will be safe. As to her son, she feared that he
will be put to jail once convicted. Such dreadful thought was driving
her crazy. Her high school classmate who is a lawyer promised to help her but
that was not enough considering that she lived far away from his son.
Esper’s life is like a telenovela; it could stun anyone but also bring
laughter at times. Despite her sufferings, she could still make me
laugh.
“That is probably how most Filipinos deal with their problems,” I
concluded. “Maybe, Esper wanted simply to be heard. Maybe she just
needed someone to listen to her problems.” “Was he really capable of
raping a girl who is a lot older than him?” was my insistent question.
“Is your son that big to overthrow a girl who might have protested to
such sexual attempt?”
From her wallet Esper took out a picture of her with her children and
pointed to me her son who looked so frail and innocent. I wondered when
that picture was taken, but most likely it was taken just recently
because it looked new. Esper wanted to go home to be with her son but she knew it was
impossible unless she cuts short her working contract. In that case, she
will go home not only penniless, but with lots of debts.
In between sobs she said, “I thought that by working overseas, I
could really provide a good life to my children. Evidently, I was not
able to.”
At that moment, I had to excuse myself from our unexpectedly very
long conversation. I had to prepare for my next mass and she knew that
my time was limited during Sundays. I left her with the promise to talk
to her again. She rejoined her friends at the lobby. I knew that they
would console her and probably extend the usual support.
While celebrating my next mass that particular Sunday, I had Esper in
my thoughts. I also thought of her family. I imagined the pain she
carried in her heart when that year before she discovered that her two
daughters were raped by their tricycle driver. Thank God, they did not
become pregnant. Who was looking after them now, guarding them from
possible abuse? In less than a year, her son stood accused of raping a
girl. Was she telling me the truth? How could she bear the gross pain as
a mother?
Earlier, she had approached me for advice. Would it help if she
catches the first flight to Manila the next day and proceed to General
Santos to be with her son? Why doesn’t she just go home and be with her
son? If she goes home, will the case be resolved? Will her problem be
gone?
That afternoon I was more equipped to talk to her again. I went to
look for her at the lobby, but she was not there. I proceeded to the
third floor of the parish multi-purpose building where she normally
attends the prayer meeting with the charismatic community, but I was
told that she skipped that session. I checked her presence at the second
floor among the other groups who were having meetings but she was
nowhere to be found.
Moving around the parish, I saw her inside the church. She looked as
calm as the place. There were few people inside the church who were
either kneeling in front of the Blessed Sacrament at the right side of
the church or lighting candles at the altar of Our Lady of Perpetual
Help located at the right. She was at the main altar, seated in front of
the risen image of Jesus Christ hanged on the cross. I walked by in
front of the main altar trying to seek her attention, attempting to
disturb her and hoping that she would approach me. I was hesitant to
break her communion with God. She did not look at me. Her eyes were only
fixed at the wooden image of the risen Christ. Her gaze at Jesus was
steady, persistent and not even blinking. I presume she had seen me walking by the altar, but she did not
bother to ask for a meeting again. She might have found her salvation.
Fr. Edwin Corros, CS
Editors Note: The story is from the book “Migrants’ Stories,
Migrants’ Voices 4″ published by the Philippine Migrants Rights Watch
(PMRW) with the support from CEI (Conferenza Episcopale Italiana) or the
Italian Bishops’ Conference. The book contains a collection of 10
stories of the realities of migration as faced by Filipinos abroad and
their family members in the Philippines. abs-cbnNEWS.com obtained
permission from PMRW to publish the stories online.
