from “Commodities: An Autobiography”
Overseas Filipino Worker
By Eileen R. Tabios

In 1901, just after the Americans took over the civil administration of the Philippines, young Filipinos—in quest for a better life—went to work in the pineapple plantations in Hawaii. Thus began the Filipino Diaspora that has brought millions of Filipinos to different countries in the world today.
—Perry Diaz, a frequent internet commentator on Filipino topics

My cousin Lory was widowed when her husband Jerry was gunned down by assassins who mistook him for someone else. The culprits were never caught.  But since jueteng, a popular but illegal numbers game, was involved, we suspected the local police were in the pockets of the jueteng collector or kobrador who’d ordered the kill.  The Las Vegas Gambling Magazine claims that jueteng in the Philippines generates an average of six million pesos daily per province, with 25% going to “payola” or protection money for law enforcers and public officials.

Forced suddenly to make a living instead of staying home to be a fulltime mother to their daughter, as she and Jerry had planned, Lory found a job teaching English as an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) in Korea.  In doing so, she also became a statistic: one of approximately eight million Filipinos working in more than 100 countries around the world. 

OFWs mostly work in the United States, Canada and the oil-rich countries of the Middle East through contracts secured by the Philippine government. The contracts do not necessarily lead to citizenship in the host country but, through contract renewals, OFWS could work in the same country for more than a decade.  Due to most OFWs receiving free housing and other benefits, OFW savings are substantial, with remittances to their families in the Philippines topping more than eight million dollars a year.

Lory has done better than she expected.  English, after all, is a major asset for those dealing in global capitalism.  Still, Lory’s shopping list for Jennifer, her daughter, mirrors the guilt that weighs on her for leaving her behind in the Philippines:

Samsung TV
Samsung stereo
Sony play station
Samsung electrical paraphernalia: plugs, transformers, regulators, etc.
Hello Kitty tape player/recorder
Korean-made clothes: Snoopy pajamas, blouses, T-shirts, pants, skirts, sandals
Toiletries: Vaseline lotion, Dove soap, baby perfume, toothpaste, toothbrushes

For her parents who take care of Jennifer, as well as Lory’s brothers whose families frequently invite Jennifer to their homes, Lory would shop for such items as

Coffee-Mate creamer
Maxim coffee, decaf
Tea packs, mostly lemon and green tea
Stationery supplies including folders, pens, and pencils
Hershey’s chocolates
Toothbrushes and Close-up toothpaste
Religious tapes for one pastor brother

Her family reciprocates with

Pastilles de Ube (milk-based pastries with purple yam filling)
Kalamay (sweet sticky rice cake topped with our dark sweet coconut glaze)
Tikoy (nougat candy)
Broas (a Tagalog region delicacy)
Pili nuts
Packets of coconut milk
Neozep cold tables,
Antibiotics (amoxicillin)
Strepsils lozenges
Mixes to make such Filipino dishes as sinigang, kaldereta, tucino
Grajero (brand) panties
Avon bras
Shoes and winter boots (expensive in Korea)

Lory likes to say that the most important things she brought with her to Korea were the “attitudes” that need never be bought:

“hope”
“courage”
“prayerfulness”
“perseverance”
“a vision of a better future”

*****
Bibliography:
Notes on “The Things They Bring,” a photography-text-installation project by Lory M. Medina about Overseas Filipino Workers in Korea.  According to Lory, the OFWs in Korea number in the thousands and bring things from the Philippines that “are dear to them, that remind them of home, give them solace while in a foreign country, and strengthen them while doing ‘dirty and dangerous’ jobs.  From the initial interviews, I find that Pinoys and Pinays bring with them novenas, prayer books, bibles, rosaries, and, of course, photographs of their loved ones. They also say they bring with them ‘attitudes’ of hope, courage, prayerfulness, perseverance; a vision of a better future.”  Lory adds that Part 2 of the project will be “The Things They Send,” which will refer not only to the balikbayan boxes that OFWs send to their families, but also to jeepneys, buses, farmlots, farm tools, living rooms, kitchens, and entire houses which their families are able to acquire from their labor.

“PerryScope: The Philippines’ Nouveau Rich,” a July 1, 2005 article by Perry Diaz and disseminated through the Internet.

“Why people are hooked on jueteng” By Michael A. Bengwayan in the October 12, 2000 edition of CyberDyaryo.com.

from “Commodities: An Autobiography”
GROUND MEAT
By Eileen R. Tabios

I told Mom about my project to write an autobiography based on shopping lists.  I asked her to participate by recalling a typical weekly grocery shopping list during our first year as immigrants to the U.S. Back then, we were a family of six and my parents struggled to feed and clothe us as well as to pay the rent. I was curious as to how our economic constraints might be reflected in our grocery shopping habits.

“A wonderful idea,” my mother, ever interested in my development as a writer, enthused. 

A week passed. I called Mom to remind her of my request.

“Yes, yes,” she said. I could feel her nodding robustly, though we conversed by phone.

Another week. Another reminder.

Another week. I had my hand on the phone. I was about to call Mom to remind her again. But something stilled my fingers from dialing the phone. A feeling of discomfort. What is that? I wondered. Then I thought, I should try to remember such a list rather than nagging Mom about it again.

But all that my memory could dredge up to offer was … a tube of ground beef encased in plastic. Its packaging formed the meat into a huge sausage. But it had at least two advantages: it was cheap and one could slice pieces to fry, rather than form meat patties from a mound of beef not conveniently encased in sliceable form.

I never cooked until I entered the U.S. At age ten, I often had to cook dinner as my parents worked late. Mom must have determined that the sausage-formed ground beef was easier for me to handle.

We bought a lot of those oversized sausages. I fried up a lot of sliced patties. For many years.

As I write this, I remember something else. No, not what else could have been on those shopping lists. I remember how deeply I resented my parents’ inability to be there to make dinner for the family. I remember thinking that a ten-year-old should be too young to be placed in charge of making dinner. I remember how I loathed my parents’ absence.  I remember loathing myself even more for loathing their absence as I was aware that they had to work overtime for the family.

My teen years were turbulent. The first time I ran away, I ended up in Arizona and my mother flew on American Airlines to take me back home. I remember, at the ticket counter, watching her purchase our flight tickets back to California and, amidst my anguish, still observing: Huh, never knew Mama and Daddy used credit cards….  I have yet to return to Arizona.

Those turbulent adolescent years—it occurs to me now that they could be summed up by one product:

ground meat

trapped in tight plastic packaging, then frozen,

released by a sharp knife, only to be fried in sizzling hot oil

with always too much salt.

from “Commodities: An Autobiography”
BLUE TRUNK

Difficult teenage years. The familiar story among immigrants about the clash of values between parents reared in the, for some, “old country” and a child growing up with the values of the adopted or new country. When it came time to choose which college to attend, I mentally unfolded the map of the United States. Looking for the farthest point away from Los Angeles determined my decision to attend Barnard College, New York City.

If my parents suspected that I was running away from them and not just attending college, they buried that suspicion beneath the flurry of seeing me off to college. They bought a big metal trunk painted with my favorite color blue. Inside, they placed various items, of which I can now only remember

20 bars of Dove soap
two pillows
a new teddy bear
my first down jacket (“Be sure it’s long enough to cover her butt,” I had overheard Daddy tell Mama as they shopped for their imagination of a New York winter)
two sets of thermal underwear
a thick, but itchy, wool-blend scarf
a stationery set for “letters home”
a box of Hershey’s milk chocolate bars
five bottles of Head & Shoulders shampoo
five Sure deodorants
blue blanket
a new flannel nightgown
bed linen decorated with small pink and blue flowers
five bottles of Vaseline skin lotion
two family-size packages of Oreo cookies
three jars of Jiffy’s peanut butter
bag of rice
two cans of Spam

I packed most of my clothes and other items in two green Samsonite suitcases, the first new suitcases my parents bought since we arrived from the Philippines.  But I was told not to open the blue trunk until I got to New York so that I could be “surprised,” they said, glee lighting up their eyes with what they imagined would be my own glee upon opening the trunk.

Many of the items were available in New York drug stores. My parents could have saved much packing time and unnecessary shipping costs by simply giving me the money to acquire these supplies in New York City. From my dorm window, I could see the signs of a Duane Reade drugstore. But, of course, giving me a check instead of the lovingly-packed blue trunk would not have been the same.

My parents called the blue trunk their “care package.”

Had it not taken me years to realize their care, I would not have sold that blue trunk upon college graduation. For that blue trunk, I received $5.00 and a Snickers bar from a Columbia University sophomore.

from “Commodities: An Autobiography”
MILK

We had just started our third year in the United States.  We were having dinner, the same fried meat patties I’d prepared for, it seemed, eternity.  Perhaps some heated up corn from a can.  Of course some rice.  “Plain but comforting,” Daddy often said.

It was a hot evening.  My younger brother G. was fidgety at the table.  He cleared his plate only after many prods from Mama—we were not allowed to leave anything on our plates.

But though G. managed finally to finish everything that had littered his plate, he refused to finish his glass of milk.

Suddenly Mama screamed:  DO YOU KNOW WHAT EACH GLASS OF MILK COSTS ME?!

Into the shocked silence, Daddy whispered, “Mama … “

***

I buried that incident deep into memory’s bowels, but it reared up several months later when I visited Mama at her office. Well, it wasn’t really her “office.” With her teaching credentials useless in the United States, Mama had become a secretary. As she led me from one co-worker’s desk to another, bragging about my straight-As, her boss arrived on the scene.  He listened to Mama tell Lita, another secretary, about my 8th grade report card.  When he echoed Lita’s ooohs and aaahs, Mama turned around to introduce me.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you!” Mr. Forgotten Name exclaimed, patting me on the shoulder.  “Perhaps you’ll come work for me someday!

“Your mother is the best typist who’s ever worked for me!  And I never have to repeat my instructions for her to do what I want correctly the first time!”

I turned then to my mother and whispered, “Mama …”

 

Eileen R. Tabios has released 14 print, four electronic and 1 CD poetry collections, an art essay collection, a poetry essay/interview anthology, and a short story book. Recipient of the Philippines’ Manila Critics Circle National Book Award for Poetry, she released in 2007 two multi-genre poetry collections: The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes (Marsh Hawk Press) and SILENCES: The Autobiography of Loss (Blue Lion Books).  In her poetry, she has crafted a body of work that is unique for melding ekphrasis with transcolonialism. She performs poetics at THE BLIND CHATELAINE’S POKER POETICS BLOG (http://angelicpoker.blogspot.com/).  She’s also edited or co-edited five books of poetry, fiction and essays. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Tagalog, Japanese, Paintings, Video, Drawings, Visual Poetry, Mixed Media Collages, Kali Martial Arts, Modern Dance and Sculpture.

Filed under : EDITION  - Auto Biography Edition