I'M STILL HERE [How I became an OFW, Second of 3 parts]

After more than 13 years, I'm still an OFW.

I stayed in my first job for 26 months, despite the fact that I should have been eligible for leave or exit from it after two years, as per my contract. My bosses made it quite difficult for me to leave on time by requiring me to find my replacement myself, despite it not being my job. Even then, after I found a replacement, they still wouldn't let my passport be released until my immediate manager cleared me, to the consternation of the other bosses.

My job was ok; I handled it. What ate me during those years of being with the company was the little injustices here and there, if not against me, then, against my co-workers. For one, my salary included the end-of-service-benefit (ESB) when this should not be included in my basic pay computation. For another, we were forced to render 10 hours of work a day excluding Thursdays when we worked half-day. Fortunately, the mandatory overtime was paid accordingly. Fridays were days off.

Meals and accomodations were company-provided but meals were below par, despite efforts by fellow Filipinos (who were the cooks and kitchen personnel) to serve us something edible each time. The running joke was that we should feel grateful since we were always served baboy (pork) - binaboy na beef, or chicken or fish. He he. It became a practice to bring home the food and re-cook it to our taste.

Home was actually a porta-cabin. As someone who worked at the office, I was more fortunate than others in that the porta-cabin assigned to me had two rooms, a small toilet and an even tinier kitchen. I occupied one room while the other room was at various times occupied by a salesman, a vet and an architect! But there were those of us office-based personnel who occupied the larger porta-cabins designed for families. These versions had larger spaces including a moderate-sized living area and kitchen. Employees who worked in the fields or in non-office based jobs were allocated porta-cabins that resembled Sampaloc's boarding houses, with communal toilets to boot! In addition, their porta-cabins were located at the far end of the housing compound. It was like, they did not have to mix it up with the occupants of the porta-cabins for office-based personnel including managers and those with families. It shouted discrimination but such was the lay of the land, so to speak.

Nonetheless, it was only in Saudi Arabia did I realize that people can live quite comfortably in porta-cabins. Specially since we had this sense of being in a close-knit community of neighbors. My office mates and I would spend a lot of time together in one of the bigger porta-cabins to cook and eat dinner, to watch satellite TV, watch videos of films (there were no pirated DVDs then), sing karaoke or videoke songs, drink together (although I confined myself to eating the pulutan) or just plain pass the time away together. In time, we formed a real clique and did many things together - shopped downtown for groceries, went on trips outside of Riyadh, etc. It goes without saying though that from time to time, we would also join the activities of the other cliques in the porta-cabin community, specially during birthday celebrations which almost always turned into a huge drinking session where sadiqui (home-made alcoholic brew similar to gin or vodka) would miraculously appear and games of cards evolved from the simple pusoy dos to blackjack and tong-its, with the taya, exponentially increasing as well.

Life in the porta-cabin community however, was not all fun. We also shared the grief of co-workers who lost loved ones back home, the difficulties of those who got sick or who met accidents, the trials of not having enough money to send home and the longing for home for those who had been on the job longer than the two-year contract.

My new-found friends celebrated my first Christmas away from Manila; they were the same ones who commiserated with me as well when my long-distance relationship with my partner crumbled (although they still didn't know at that time that my partner was another guy called Vince; but nothing changed even when they found out, bless them).

Indeed, life was never the same again for me and I had my new-found friends and co-workers to thank for, for making my new life better than it could had been.

There were Rolly, Tolits, and Ace who became my clique. There was Reigner who started as my potential kalaban-sa-trono but who became my confidante. There were the oldies and the lolo- or father-image: Manong Chris, Engr. Gene, Mang Jun and the compound manager whose name escapes me to jour. There was Jong, our teaboy. There was my boss, Alfredo and his co-horts: Manong Boy, Manong Ed, as well as many others whose lives intertwined with mine, one way or the other.

There were even non-Filipinos too, whose lives touched mine and they include Faysal, a Sudanese who was so fluent in Tagalog he could pass for one, at least linguistically.

I find myself thinking about them from time to time and always wish they all live a good life. After all, this is what all of us OFWs aspire for - a better life for us and our families and loved ones, with all the detours (pambababae, alak, sugal, etc.) notwithstanding.