The OFW's Swan Song

WE ARE ALL FAMILIAR with the story of the goose that lays golden eggs. In the farmer’s greed and impatience to harvest more golden eggs from inside the fowl, he slaughtered it.
Our country has a golden goose that continues to keep our economy airborne even as the world remains grounded—the Overseas Foreign Workers (OFW’s). The golden eggs are of course the remittances, which have enabled us to surmount the Asian financial crisis, September 11, wars, SARS and the global economic inertia.

However, a virulent virus akin to SARS is giving the golden goose a wasting disease. The gangrene is hidden underneath its beautiful feathers, but the high-flyer is corroding from inside. The goose’s family—its emotional, spiritual anchor—is quietly falling apart. As a result, its social fabric is unraveling.

More than other creatures, the Filipino goose flourishes because of its family ties. As a matter of fact, this family-centeredness is the very reason for its being. It is for the family that every able-bodied Filipino aspires to work abroad, knowing that the higher reward for his toil elsewhere will benefit his family more. He thrives in extreme places of the world—from the Middle Eastern desert to the Alaskan ice. He melds into societies where he speaks no single word nor feels an iota of cultural affinity.

Because of such bond, the goose lays more golden eggs than just dollar remittances. He is a pillar of the telecommunications industry in Japan, being outstripped only by U.S., South Korea and China in terms of number of minutes spent on overseas calls. (While telephone traffic to such countries are mostly due to business, traffic to the Philippines are mostly personal—made to family members.) The door-to-door cargo industry is uniquely Filipino—it embodies the overseas Filipino’s desire to share everything of what he has with his loved ones, from trinkets to electronic gadgets to his budget staple, ramen.

This relentless golden-egg producer is in pain. The other day, a gentle, soft-spoken construction worker called me up to unload a problem that has given him sleepless nights. He was told by his older sister that his wife, to whom he religiously sends a monthly stipend of 10 man (a fortune in these pinching times), is seeing another man.

His anxiety seems not entirely groundless. His wife never seems to run out of reasons why she’s not home when he calls late at night, and the three children keep mentioning an unfamiliar name, Tito.

Not too long ago, one of his barkadas, who left for Japan ten years ago when his wife was six months pregnant, almost had a nervous breakdown upon learning that his wife had left him for their jeepney driver.

The list of woes is endless. A former entertainer who now works in a factory found out that her husband is sharing the roof into which she had poured most of her hard-earned income with a neighbor who is now pregnant.

A Filipino pastor once confided to me that it is hard to preach the topic of marital fidelity in Japan. After the Sunday in which he sermonized on adultery, attendance to his congregation decreased by half. When he advised a couple who cohabits despite each having a husband and wife in the Philippines, he was sharply rebuffed: “The ground rules are different in Japan! Your advice doesn’t make sense.” The norm is infidelity. Marital faithfulness is becoming outmoded, even “weird” to the point of becoming the butt of jokes.

In an informal survey I made, close to 80% of overstaying Filipinos have extra-marital arrangements. Close to 50% of Filipinos married to Japanese likewise have extra-marital affairs with other Filipinos. The reason is not hard to see: most of the Filipinos who venture abroad are not only at prime working age but also at their sexual prime.

The hurt is not easily seen from outside—but can be gleaned from a lifestyle of pachinko, drunkenness and fun-seeking consistent with a soul that has lost spiritual steerage and anchor. Such misery has generated other perversely golden opportunities for detective services (to spy on suspected wayward spouses) and drug rehabilitation centers for families of overseas Filipinos.

Yet the husbandman (a.k.a. Philippine government) continues to shoo the goose wider afield so that it can lay more eggs. After her celebrated stump to the U.S., Pres. Gloria Arroyo proceeded to South Korea which has a growing Filipino workforce. She also visited Japan this month, among other things to muscle her caregiver agenda into Japan’s arthritic political process.

Some 7 million Filipino geese are now scattered in 120 countries laying close to US $8 billion worth of golden eggs. Who is there to hear their swan song?*

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