HOW I BECAME AN OFW [First of 3 parts]

This is the real story. He he.

The year was 1993. I was already working as a reporter for a business newspaper when a friend/former colleague from the school where I used to work prior to becoming a reporter, called me from Riyadh to ask me to be his replacement at his job there. He said that he had not been at his job for two weeks when he realized that he (and his young family back home in Manila) will not be able to make a go of it. He can't be in Riyadh for two years without something bad happenning to his family life. He can't risk it.

He was already a month into the job actually when he called me up. All this time, he was trying to think of someone and finding a way to get a replacement. On hindsight though, more than the family issues, I think it was the nature of the job that did it. Here was an intellectually superior/really cerebral person working as a secretary. Things just didn't gel.

I was living with a partner then who himself had been recruited to work abroad as fashion designer. But he already had a flourishing career on broadcast TV, and branching out occasionally to TV adverts. I thought it will be a waste to pass up the chance to be better in his career in Manila with a very uncertain job in the Middle East. We agreed that if an opportunity to work abroad comes along, I will be the one to take it.

So I did. And life was never the same again.

To be sure, it was not the first time I tried going abroad. After graduation from college, I tried the Manila Bulletin's job want ads every Sunday. I lined up for Aramco openings as advertised by IPAMS. I also tried EDI Staffbuilders and was lucky enough to get past the interview stage. But nothing came out of these efforts until this replacement secretarial job.

I was processed by a nondescript recruitment agency in Quezon City which asked me to pay more than ten thousand pesos as recruitment fee, despite labor laws that said solicitation of recruitment fees were illegal, and even then, may not exceed five thousand pesos if at all.

I went through medical exams including blood tests which turned scary since the lab asked for a second sample on the day the results were supposed to be given out. As the lab technician explained, it turned out that the first blood sample turned panis (or stale). The medical exams also included what the test administrators referred to as psychological exams. I should say that those exams asked me inane questions that didn't seem to have any bearing on my job prospects nor did they have any hints as to how they can accurately measure my psychological capacity to handle a secretarial job in the Middle East.

The medical exams also included a thorough check of one's body. I was told to strip to my underwear and a doctor took a good look at me including at areas where no one had looked into before, at least medically-speaking.

Even while undergoing medical exams, I also had to work out my travel papers including getting my first-ever passport. There were no third companies then that would process passports for you for a fee and so I lined up at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) like every other prospective OFW. Only the queues and the proverbial bureaucratic red tape at the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI, where you get clearances from any criminal record), were worse. In addition, the records at DFA raised a red flag against a Roberto Magno who had a pending estafa case at Binan, Laguna. I had to travel to Laguna and get myself a certification that I was not the same Roberto Magno. Fortunately, the people at the records division at Binan were kind enough souls - they issued me the certification on the day I made the request.

Before being deployed abroad, I also had to undergo a Pre-Departure Orientation Seminar (PDOS), which would purportedly help me understand the culture in the Middle East. If I understood that culture, such knowledge was supposed to help me avoid difficulties, including being involved in situations that may end up in diplomatic faux pas. On hindsight, I think that our PDOS facilitator was no more than a rumor-mongerer and an alarmist. And I even found out later that he had never been to the region he was supposed to be knowledgeable of.

To prepare for my trip abroad, my partner and I invested our meager resources on a huge maleta (suitcase), with matching check-in luggage bag and a shoulder bag. As a gift and to ensure I got me a source of some sort of entertainment while away, my partner bought me a Sony Walkman!

In a short time (barely three months since my friend/former colleague made his call to me), I was on my way to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to begin life as an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW).