Aliping namamahay

KUWAIT — We stand indignant whenever some audacious columnist would have the temerity to call our country a nation of servants. We react violently, whenever we see our country's international beauty pageant contestants, being insulted with such embarrassing question as "How do you respond" to people who say that the Philippines is a today's number one supplier of domestic helpers?" And we pretend to be angry when some dictionary writers would commit the ultimate racist "faux pas" by writing that the meaning of "Filipina" is maid.

And yes, we close our eyes to the undeniable fact that everyday, thousands of wives leave their husbands behind, thousands of mothers leave their young children to the care of relatives, and they embark on many indefinite journeys to foreign land in order to work as domestic helpers for foreign employers who often look down on them as lesser human beings, or to borrow the appellation of the more imaginative, calling the domestic helpers as children of the lesser gods.

To many maids, too many broken hearts We are not a nation of servants, yes, but here in Kuwait alone, there are 65,000 domestic helpers out of 140,000 OFWs. As Labor Attaché, every single day, I sign 60 to 100 contracts involving household service workers. And everytime I affix my signature in every contract, I see the faces of children who are being abandoned by their own mothers because these Filipinas have obligated themselves to care for the children of foreigners whom they don't even know. I see the faces of husbands being tortured by thoughts of infidelity and adultery, perplexed by their own inability to provide for the basic needs of their family, and traumatized by the sudden pains of physical and soon, emotional separation.

Seven out of every ten maids that I interview are already separated from their husbands. "Sumakabilang bahay" that is how they put it because their spouses are unable to bear the loneliness and the longings. If the wife works abroad for two to ten years, the husbands cannot be expected to remain faithful, especially if the wives themselves have betrayed the marital vows while working in foreign lands.

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