Field Notes N15
A week of toing-and-froing
in ZaNorte--that is Zamboanga del Norte for those aversed to the Orwellian
vocabulary of shortening phrases to economize, and hopefully, not to carry out
deception as this 1984 vocabulary wanted to do--had given me a lot to talk
about, and to write about.
Like Cebu and other places
I have been to prior to taking up the life of a vagabond and living in many
places except the homeland, Dipolog--and Dapitan afterwards--have become
strange places.
Both are cities on steroids
of the false kind.
They are some kind of
politicians—or children and wives of politicians--rushing to become senators.
Or even presidents, if they
have the history of madness, ambition, wealth, name-recall, and what-have-you.
I have known them before, these
cities, but now they are unfamiliar places.
The airport you still
remember, with the mano-mano style for getting your luggage and baggage,
and the template of the carambola as
people eager to go home compete for a corral-like space where the exhibits of
travel are dumped like garbage from a mano-mano truck.
Ah, this is interesting, I
remind myself.
You cannot compare this
spectacle with those of other places, I reminded myself.
You must now add that when
you checked in for your flight back to that horrible Luzon metropolis, its
heart run by a B-actor well-loved by the B-crowd for his posturing and for his
empty promises of cleaning up (but not in his backyard, or should he?), the
bored screening people asked you to open the entrails of your bag and backback,
take out all those they ask you to take out, and make that groping act to feel
what else is inside your bag because: (a) groping for unwanted things inside a
bag makes them alert and (b) the X-ray machine is out of order (has it gone
bonkers too?) and therefore, groping is called for to ensure that there is
going to be security for all air travellers courtesy of the groping,
back-patting, and social psychology, Dipolog-style.
Of course, the flight was
delayed.
First at 12:50, and then at
2:00, and then at 4:00 PM all because something is wrong in the air traffic
somewhere, or that the replacement plane has also gone bonkers.
So much for waiting.
So much for not being able
to do something substantial when one is at airports with the eternal whirring
and whizzing of the industrial fan.
No, the airport in not in
air-con mode.
Since you came from Dapitan
and you had to pass through checkpoints, you left your resort place in Dapitan
early, at 8:00 so that by 9:30 you are there at the airport and waiting and
waiting for your noontime flight to home.
To get that delayed flight,
you had to wait for six-and-half hours at the airport of Dipolog, with two
inane television on with their inane shows and so loud you wanted to make abracadabra
and turn them into computers so people would understand the cyberspace world of
bored travellers like me.
But even air travelers,
most of them incidentally called Filipinos, love to watch those mindless shows.
And the airport people let
them be—or have connived to make these people watch these inane shows so people
forget that their flight has been delayed twice.
Ah, democracy!
The delayed came in, at
4:00.
You are called in and you
are seated in the middle, on the right side of the plane when you face the
pilot's cockpit.
On my right are
sisters-in-law Daisy and Karen.
Karen is from Dapitan, and
Daisy from Cotabato.
Daisy is married into the
family of Karen who are natives of Dapitan.
Daisy has a four-year old daughter,
and she will leave her behind under the care of her mother-in-law when she
leaves for Qatar.
"I will be paid 300
USD for a month," she says. "We could save some for the studies of
Miriam, our daughter."
"Your husband allowed
you to leave?"
"Initially, he did
not. But his work as a repair mechanic in a machine shop is not giving us
enough for our needs and for our future."
"How long will you
stay in Qatar?"
"Two years, that is
the contract. I am praying I will have a kind and good lady-boss and
man-boss."
"What will you do
there?"
"Domestic help. That
is all they want from us Filipinos. Except if you are a nurse or an
engineer."
"What about you,
Karen?"
"It is the same thing.
I will serve the needs of a family of five. That was what I was told. This
means that I will do all the work."
"You will not be
staying under the same boss, you and Daisy?"
"No. We will live far
away from each other. But we will have day-offs, or that was what we were
told."
"So you will be away
for two years, too?"
"Yes. Two years of
sacrifice. Two years of prayers--and lots of prayers."
"Why don't you stay
here. The salary is not that much."
"We cannot find that over
here. Salesladies are paid three thousand pesos or just a litte bit more. And
then you have to pay for your transportation and other needs at work. Nothing
is going to be left with you. I tried. It did not make sense.”
"Is that the reason
you are leaving?"
"We have to live, that
is the reason."
How old are you
two?"
"Karen is 24. I am
22."
"You married
young?"
"To young to have a
family. An OFW father deserted us, and mother became an OFW herself to fend for
us. We have gone through a lot, and I wanted a stable life. And now these
hardships are visiting me all over again. But I keep praying and
praying."
Keep well, I told
them.
I imagine these two young
women in Qatar with their kindhearted lady-boss and good-natured
man-boss.
Or so I hope.
Dipolog, Las Island
Filipinas, June 9, 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment