Home is in the heart–and where the purse is By JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia—In January 2001,the young couple Dennis and Mylene del Rosario took their six-year-old son Daryl Mikko with them to Jeddah.
It was two years after Mylene followed her husband to Saudi Arabia. The couple took Daryl to Jeddah to find out if the child—whom they had left in the care of Dennis’s parents—could adjust to life in the Kingdom.
“If Daryl could adjust to life here, we wanted to keep him with us. If he wanted to go back we were prepared to send him back,” says Mylene, a 27-year-old nurse working at the King Faisal Hospital.
“To our astonishment—and our relief—he liked it here. Like the Saudis, he liked being awake at night and asleep in the daytime. He even liked Arabian food; in fact, his favorite until now is the yellow rice.”
The couple remembers how the child almost pleaded with them to let him stay.
“Sana dito na lang ako para magkasama tayo (I wish I could stay here so we can be together),” Dennis quotes Daryl as saying, when they asked him if he wanted to go back to the country in June in time for the opening of the Philippine school year.
Daryl began as a kindergarten-2 pupil at the International Philippine School in Jeddah (IPSJ).
The Del Rosarios are among thousands of Filipino migrant workers who have decided to bring their families with them to the countries where they have found better-paying jobs.
Saudi visa policy
The Saudi government allows foreign workers to bring their families with them if they can show that their salaries are enough to support a family here. Those earning SR4,000 (Saudi riyals) or more are usually qualified. (Many laborers earning from SR1,000 to SR1,500, however, would not qualify.) Many Filipino professional workers are taking advantage of this benefit.
The migration of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) is replete with stories of untold sacrifices by each worker who spends sleepless nights staring blankly at the ceiling of his room or of mothers leaving their kids to the care of the father or relatives while working as nannies for children not their own.
In the worst case scenario, overseas employment is a tapestry of tragic stories about families breaking up while one spouse or both spouses are working abroad. Since the migration of Filipino workers started in the late 1970s, it has become commonplace to hear about a husband or wife looking for comfort in another’s arms, or about kids going wayward for lack of parental supervision.
The Del Rosarios decided to take Daryl with them to Jeddah when they started to feel that their long absence had weakened their child’s bond with them.
Pain of estrangement
“When we talked to Daryl on the phone when he was still in the Philippines, we felt we were becoming like strangers to him, nawawala yung bonding. Para bang ibang tao na kami sa kanya. (…the bonding was disappearing. It’s like we were already strangers to him),” says Mylene.
The gap was pronounced during Daryl’s first month in Jeddah. The couple remembers how Daryl would refer to Dennis’s parents as his “daddy and mommy.”
“He would say ‘sa amin (at our place back home) daddy and mommy would often take me out at night,’” Mylene recalls. “Or ‘paglaki ko gusto kong maging tulad ni daddy’ (When I grow up I want to be like daddy), in reference to Dennis’s father who is a lawyer, a city prosecutor.”
“It was like we were not part of him, like we were not his parents. There was something in the way he said ‘sa amin’ which made us feel we were like strangers to him.”
Trials and choices
For Jun and Marissa Bunao, the decision to take the family to Jeddah came in 1998, a year after Jun, an electronics engineer, moved here to work with the German company Siemens.
“He got me and (one-year-old daughter) Maxine to come over on a trial basis,” recalls Marissa, who then filed a leave of absence as an administrative staffer at the Philippine Heart Center in Quezon City.
It took a long time for Marissa to decide whether to bring the whole family to Jeddah. She extended her leave three times until the Heart Center asked her to make a definite decision. “I was reluctant to leave my job, my career,” she recalls.
In April 1999, fate made the decision for the family—their rented house on J. Marzan Street near España in Manila’s Sampaloc district went up in flames in an afternoon blaze that started somewhere in the neighborhood.
“Nawalan ng choices (We lost our choices). All our belongings—furniture, appliances, jewelry, and even clothes—were gone with the house,” Marissa retells.
The couple were forced to take their two other children—Joseph Raphael, then 11, and Earle Randolph, 6—who had been left in the care of Marissa’s mother in Manila.
Along with Maxine, the two other children are enrolled at the IPSJ.
Adjustments needed
Like many other Filipino parents who have decided to raise their children in the Kingdom, the Bunaos and the Del Rosarios have to make many adjustments in their home away from home.
For Marissa and Mylene, who came from middle-class families in the Philippines and were used to having maids to do the household chores, the adjustment period was a trying experience.
“Back in the Philippines you don’t have to worry about cleaning the house or washing clothes because the maids do the chores for you. And, also because my mother was with us, I didn’t have to worry about what to cook. She planned the menus for us,” says Marissa.
Balancing acts
Like the Del Rosarios, the Bunaos pay a lot of attention to the education of their children, who are in the top ten of their classes. “That puts more pressure on us,” says Marissa, who has decided not to work anymore to take care of the children full time. “Parenting is like a high-wire balancing act between housekeeping and looking after the children.”
The household chores are just half the difficulties, especially for the Del Rosarios. Since both spouses are working nurses, parenting and looking after Daryl’s studies take the other half. Whoever is at home in the morning takes Daryl to school for his 8 a.m.-11 a.m. classes and does the household chores in between.
Worth the sacrifice
“Usually, we sleep only about four to five hours a day,” says Dennis who works at the King Khalid National Guard Hospital. “After work we have to budget our time between doing the household chores and helping Daryl with his studies. It’s difficult, but it’s the price we have to pay.”
Mylene says she often dozes off while helping out Daryl with his school lessons. She and Dennis make up for the lost sleep during their days off and on weekends when Daryl has no classes.
Despite the difficulties, the Del Rosarios have never thought of sending Daryl, who is in the top-five of his class, back to live with Dennis’s parents in the Philippines.
“It’s out of the question. Our being together is worth the sacrifices,” says Dennis. Mylene adds: “You worry more when your child is not with you, so it is better that he stays with us.”
Facing the problem
Over the past few months, Pepito and She Rodriquez have been working to get visas for their two children.
“The question that keeps nagging us is, ‘isn’t it a problem that our children are growing up without us?’” says She, a teacher at the IPSJ.
The question puts to sharp focus one mundane reality which many migrants have known pretty well—home is not a matter of geography, it isn’t any particular place at all. Home is where the heart—and where the purse—is.
***
I took my wife and child with me after my first vacation in the summer of 2000, having worked out their visas while I was in Jeddah. That vacation was an eye-opener: my daughter, whom I had left when she was barely a year old, wouldn’t let me in the bedroom. At the airport she had grabbed the Tweety doll I bought for her then rushed back to her mother. At home, later that night, she said, “Huwag ka tulog dito amin kwarto, doon ikaw labas (You can’t sleep in our room. You stay outside).” I had the amusing but awkward task of trying to introduce myself to my two-year-old daughter: “I am your father. Remember, we talked on the phone while I was away…”
Angel will be 14 on May 21. She is now in her first year of high school at the Pearl of the Orient International School, one of the five Filipino schools in Jeddah. I laugh when I remember the story of my first vacation home. And despite the higher cost of living overseas, I am happy to have brought them over to Saudi Arabia, where I am working as an editor in the Saudi Gazette.
This article, originally published in the Saudi Gazette, is an abridged version of a chapter in Casiano Mayor’s book “The Gypsy Soul and Other Essays” available at amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. –Casiano Mayor Jr., Philippine Daily Inquirer
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