Why leave your mother?

Why leave your dear mother?


More than 3,000 Filipinos leave their families behind to work abroad. If you ask one of them, the usual answer is, they don’t want to leave, but there’s no opportunity here. Government says they leave because of the money.


I say, it’s not just the money—it’s the uncertainty of life that they want to leave.


Escapists, that’s what other foreigners say about Pinoys. A racial slur this is? Ask me how many Americans are out there, trying to carve their own futures in someone’s land. You’ll be surprised that there are more Americans than Filipinos out there living their own lives outside of America. The Filipino Diaspora is not a phenomenon, oh no. It is as ordinary as any other Filipino tradition.


Droves left the country at the height of the Marcos regime. Some left due to political persecution. Most, well, did so out of economic frustration. However, they are not the first OFWs. No. Since pre-colonial times, we already know how many Filipinos left the comforts of these lands to explore other lands. It just hugged the headlines because of the sheer number of Pinoys who left Manila International Airport all at the same time and day.


Some went to Japan and sold their souls to the highest sex bidder. Others sang their way to the hearts of many and others still used their cooking skills to satiate someone’s hungry stomach. Some were doctors and engineers. While many suffer from diseases and illnesses here, no one takes care of them because those doctors and specialists are out there, curing a foreigner’s liver or transplanting a European’s heart with a dead Pinoy.


Most were ordinary mothers and fathers who left their children in the care of their parents for that measly S$350 a month salary or a HK$3,000. Some get their salaries right while others serve as slaves. Better to be slaves in someone’s palatial house than be freemen without the chance to eat three times a day.


When Cory won, several thousand went back to live their lives here. I know of some who grew up in America, went back to North Greenhills and resumed their lives, only to find themselves getting their clothes back to their suitcases and leaving when Gloria assumed power. Those nine years saw the prostitution of the bureaucracy and the destruction of the entire social structure.


Ask a college student out there and the usual talk is how fast visa processing in Canada is than the US. Ask a beautiful and dusky Pinay from the North who is her ideal husband and you’ll be shocked to know that it’s not Piolo Pascual, but an Indian or an old American retiree. As they say, some young Pilipina wants somebody who is a Foreigner, an old one, ready to die and leave his dollars behind. Most who’ll read this will surely disagree. Most will even chastise me for saying these things. Ask around and like what Gloria said, look around you. Those who’ll disagree are usually your post-graduates or born with a silver spoon in their mouths. What I know is even post-graduates marry foreigners. It is only foreigners who appreciate what it means of having a post-graduate diploma. Government does not.


How hard it is to live here? Just look at the faces of those who ride your MRT, your jeepneys and your buses. Look at the stressed out faces of those who drive their own cars. Look at those who work their asses off in some call center office. Or, just look at the faces of those who buy stuff at groceries and supermarkets. It was better when Makros were around. Now, SM dominates the retail business and imposing those exorbitant food rates. Before, your thousand will get you five or six plastic bags. Now, your thousand will only get you two. And it’ll last for just two or three days.


People leave because they want to feel secure. People leave because they see no hope. People leave because they find other places wonderful, secure and lively.


Eighty eight percent believes that something beautiful will happen in the next six years. While those 88% feel that there is still hope, the numbers of those who are leaving remain pretty much the same. Only half of the population thinks that Pnoy will do what he promised and that is just swell. The reason why many feel there is still hope because they lived throughout these past nine years devoid of it. When you lived in the deepest and darkest pit, even a dimly lit room is better.


Our concept of hope has changed. Our standards are well below the average. Since we saw how government has ignored us for the last couple of years, even just a semblance of change, we so think as better than before.


We’re already satisfied when our president calls for the arrests of those with wangwangs, forgetting that there are hundreds of smugglers, drug lords, jueteng lords, oil cartels, food and rice cartels and what-have-you, moneyed people who exploit our weaknesses almost every single day.


We’re just satisfied when our president conducts weekly press conferences or when we hear our new officials apologizing for their mistakes. In other countries, when a government official commits a moral faux pas, he leaves government with his head bowed and his stomach disemboweled. Here, a mere apology is enough.


No amount of listening to classical or Buddhist music can ever drown out the ever so loud and blaring sounds of Filipino reality. No amount of a stirring speech from Pnoy can ever displace the real sounds of groaning and moaning of Filipinos who voted for you but are now suffering due to rising prices.


Is it enough for us to know that Pnoy also suffers from text blasts? Does it worth our while to know that he too, suffers from traffic jams every single day? It would have been shocking even to read that Pnoy is suffering from hunger pangs. That is, unbelievable already. That’s why his propagandists have avoided such silly lies.


If the President suffers like an ordinary Pinoy, then, why is that? It is discomforting to know this. He’s supposed to provide solutions. Why is he allowing such things to pester him and us?


No one leaves a country full of honey and milk. No one leaves his mother for another. Dress my mother well, give her food to eat and water to drink. Provide her with a roof over her head. No one wants to leave his mother behind.