As we were heading out of Central London from Victoria station, the bus stopped along Hyde Park. A woman hopped in and smiled as soon as she saw us. It was an instantaneous, eager yet wistful smile. Then she spoke in the dialect with much excitement: "Kagagaling nyo lang po ng Pilipinas?" My huge luggage was a giveaway. I was caught by her cheerfulness. It was as if she was there to meet me, too. Then she said it's been almost ten years since she went home. There was a brief silence after that. This was one of those awkward moments when I am not sure how to emphatize.
She asked many things about the country. I didn't know if I should just say the nice things. There were a few, come to think of it. She said she has not seen her children since but she's so happy mobile phones and the internet have made their absence more and more bearable. I looked at her hands. She still had her ring on. I said she should make plans to go home soon. A lot has changed in the country and that it would surprise her, in a positive way. She was very excited to talk about her family at the same time yearning to know about any news from back home. There was some sadness and a tinge of "inggit" on her part when I responded that I am not actually in London for the long haul. "Mabuti ka pa," she said.
Then came her stop near a hospital. It was as if we've known each other for a long time. Suddenly I felt so tired and so wanting to go back home. My friend said the number of Filipino nurses in UK is quite significant. Perhaps sensing my loneliness, she said it's quite an experience when you become a recipient of such instant affinity and when they begin to openly talk about their dreams and aspirations.
I was actually surprised that I felt surprised. After all, having OFW relatives is commonplace in the Philippines. I read somewhere there's an average of one or two in each household. My family being a very recent addition to that statistic. But it was different seeing them in another country.
What I saw was a different face of an OFW--not the happy, exhilarated "balikbayan"--and made me start looking at our OFW phenomenon with a different set of eyes. Questions ran on my mind. They still do. How come the government never seriously looked at how this phenomenon would shape the foundation of our nation--the family? Many studies have shown increasing incidence of breakups, legal or otherwise. But no study is ever needed to tell every Filipino about the kind of alienation it has created in families all these years.
For all that OFW money, why can't the government develop programs that will mitigate all these adverse impacts? It is hard to even think about this if you're an OFW trying to relieve your family from hand-to-mouth existence. Or if you're a housewife or a house-band left waiting for the next remittance not knowing you've been sharing your spouse's salary with his or her new family somewhere. Or that the spouse has become a totally different person--a stranger who can no longer fit in your family. You'll hear too many of these on AM radio. Most of us just choose to keep a blind eye. Money seem to find all the justifications for what has been clearly a tragic erosion of our society's fiber. Some would argue these are personal matters but I would argue that the welfare of an OFW and his family is a clear public good. The least a government can do is to do something. I can only hide my disbelief when a top government official recently spoke at the school proudly showing off his charts announcing that on the strength of its diverse remittances alone, the Philippines can actually withstand any major crisis happening in any of the major economies. Tsk. The foreigners in the room were equally incredulous. For a major government officer on a major PR campaign for the country, saying that certainly left a bad taste on the mouth. If our country's future is largely hedged on this, perhaps, I might never see the reverse of Filipino diaspora in my lifetime?
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