Surviving away from home
Published 6/25/10, Manila Standard Today

Years ago, my friends and I left the Philippines for America and Canada. We graduated the same year from the University of the Philippines with a baccalaureate degree in English. Three of us went on to graduate school, one earned her doctorate degree, and two took additional courses in other fields. All of us held good jobs and responsible positions. We crossed the Pacific, not as supplicants, but as victors carrying our spoils to the new country.

This is our story.

As newbies, finding a place to live initially meant staying with family or friends. “My sister Jo and I lived with an aunt and her twelve children. We babysat our younger cousins, and I was also the designated dishwasher. The second year found me sharing a one-bedroom apartment with four other people. We slept in sleeping bags, and had make-shift furniture. We pooled our meager salaries. (Daisy Ann)

Letty and her husband first lived with his mother’s friend in California. “We paid a minimal fee for what used to be a storage room, so small it was difficult to move about. On the plus side, there was a computer I could use and our landlord cooked Filipino food.”

God bless the Filipino extended family plan! My sister and her husband welcomed me to their home, along with my three children, our mom and youngest sister. Fortunately, it was a three-story house. My children and I made the basement our temporary home. We were, literally, “the people under the stairs.”

CeeCee lived with her sister and husband and took care of her six-month old niece. She continued living with them until she was able to buy her own condo unit. Celia had similar living arrangements. “I lived with Ate Rusty, her husband and 2 kids, ages two and four. It was quite a change from having my own room in the Philippines to sleeping on the couch for almost a year, and on the floor when we had guests.”

Greta and her husband rented their own, but she faced other challenges. “I came to Washington as a GI wife. We had a one-bedroom apartment close to Fort Lewis; no telephone and no car. For months I was a stay-at-home mom and wife. The highlight of my day was checking the mail, walking to the corner store with my three-year old daughter Shen, and welcoming my husband at the end of the workday.”

The next hurdle was securing a job but we didn’t think that would be too big a problem. But there were unpleasant surprises along the way, and a few scary moments.

Letty applied for secretarial and clerical positions but “nobody would hire me even if my typing speed was 85 wpm and I scored high on tests.” She finally secured a part-time teaching job at the local college. When the full-time position opened, her application was turned down because “my degrees were from a non-regionally accredited, US-based institution.” Ironically, Letty is the one person in our group with a doctorate degree and a university-level teaching experience.

So yes, there was discrimination. Daisy Ann said her dead-end work experiences made her realize that “having a B.A. in English from a foreign country shut down, rather than opened doors.” But she plowed on and kept her sense of humor. She quit her first job as an Avon lady when a customer sicced her 6- foot, 200-plus pound husband on her. She acquired a series of seasonal jobs, then started student teaching at a neighboring high school. She quickly opted for elementary level after “…having to look up at six-foot students who called me ‘Babe’ and commented loudly, ‘Ain't she cute?’”

Greta got the first job she applied for, but she had no car and there were no buses where she lived. She ended up staying with friends during the week and riding with them to and from work. She wrote, “My immediate supervisor was a kind-hearted Korean lady who made me rest at the back of the records room during breaks. She even gave me driving lessons. She used to say, ‘In America, you don't need a husband. You just need a telephone and a car.’ "

Celia needed an invisibility cloak; she was a bona fide TNT working illegally in New York. “Sometimes there were rumors that Immigration officers were checking the subway. I would leave home at 6 even if my work didn't start until 9, thinking I could avoid them (they didn’t start work until 8:30). In the afternoon I would walk 20 blocks to a bigger subway station hoping for safety in numbers. One time I was with my family buying tickets when I spotted a US Immigration officer. I bolted for my brother-in-law’s car and cowered in the back seat. It was a July afternoon and the car was baking hot but I was too petrified to move.”

All through those first few months, Celia was so sure she would get caught and sent back so she kept her maleta ready, but in true Filipino fashion, stuffed it with pasalubong. Happily, she met Francis, and he made her legal in a couple of ways. But she missed her comfortable life in Batangas. “It was brutal to come home after a long day at the office knowing you still had to do the laundry or the dishes. Appliances are great but someone still has to push the vacuum cleaner and unload the dishwasher. It was a one-man show. You made your own coffee; you fetched your own water. No maids. No yaya.”

CeeCee remembers waiting for the bus in the rain and the snow, dreaming of the easy life she had back home. We all suffered through the same withdrawal symptoms. It was debilitating at first, then we got past the hump and it was all behind us.

We call the US and Canada home now. The Philippines is like a parent we left behind – viewed with much affection and amused tolerance, and thankfully, from a great distance.