Finding Love in the Age of Suppression

Finding Love in the Age of Suppression

Wilhelmina S. Orozco

The streets of Hong Kong could not show me which way to go: to the shopping malls or to be with the migrant workers in the big plaza. If I would be at the shopping malls, I would have to part with some of the honorarium I received from the conference which could very well tide over my needs for the next months. But if my feet would take me to the plaza, I would feel very low, very depressed. Why because I could not understand how the migrant workers I had met, many of whom were elementary teachers back home, could be assuming lowly domestic help jobs, demeaning themselves just to earn a pittance but enough for the education of their children.

In the home that I had stayed during one conference, I slept in a room with a domestic helper, Rene and found her leafing through her family album every night, wiping the plastic sheets covering the pictures as if wanting to caress her children while also drying her eyes from falling tears. The scene was heart-tugging and also reminded me of the migrants in better position in Paris. They lived a more well-off lifestyle, better salaries, and a daily view of a first class city of the arts, with the Louvre and the Left Bank teeming with peripatetic artists and café- habitués.

Somehow, my feet did take me to the plaza, and as I shuffled from group to group of why, almost all women offering the newsletter of the Makamasa organization, I had felt a great kinship with them, as if they were my own neighbors with whom I could share family stories. Reading the word, Makamasa as title of the newsletter, many looked at me with suspicion. Am I brainwashing them with the same radical ideas? “Anong organisasyon mo?” one asked me with great imperiousness.

“Makamasa,” I said. She leafed through the newsletter, thankful probably that the name did not sound like any of those radical ones that they knew. After a bit of hesitation she gave me 2 Hong Kong dollars, donation, not the price as I did not print any on the newsletter. Before I could say thanks, I heard something that made my heart skip a beat.

Tak, tak, tak, went the footsteps on the concrete pavement of the huge town plaza, a big quadrangle in the heart of Hong Kong with a monument of a former British head of the colony. The sounds were like the marching footsteps of soldiers in Nazi films full of German villains and American heroes always battling each other with the latter winning the war. They evoked images of Jews captured under orders from Hitler who were deluded to bathe inside concentration camps up north in Germany but instead were sent to bathrooms only to breathe unwittingly, lethal gas emitting from the water taps.

Where do the sounds come from, I asked myself, with my heart pounding more rapidly, and various images rushing through my mind like the ravaging floods in Manila. The more alone in this foreign country. Then suddenly an incident flashed which concurred with the image of the first Hong Kong police.

While coming from Kenya, and passing through Seychelles, I disembarked from the plane in Hong Kong for transfer to another plane. No direct flights to Manila were available from Europe, much more so from Africa. Hong Kong and Singapore, countries smaller than the Philippines were the transit points for the Philippine planes or those originating from Manila. At the HK airport, two police officers in dark navy blue uniforms were posted by the visa counter.

One brusquely asked me to open my handcarried baggage. I did so pronto, unzipping my bag. With a stick, he searched all over its contents. Not satisfied, he poured everything on the counter while another officer checked my passport. All my paraphernalia fell on the counter, my toothbrush, toopaste, perfume, comb, notebook, pens, etcetera. Not smiling at all, nor appearing satisfied with what he had seen or had not seen, he left the contents sprawling on the counter and motioned to me to remove my things things.

“Hey you, you scattered all my things here. You put them back.” But he did not budge an inch. He just held more strongly his armalyte, as if to say, “Don’t threaten me as I can shoot you with this if I want to.”

“You are a brute,” I cried as I angrily put back all my things in my bag, and left in a huff. But I saw another Filipina beside him, smirking at what had happened to me as if gloating over my misery. Later on, a friend revealed, that that woman, the coordinator of our trip, had whispered to the uniformed HK authorities that I was a radical.

This woman is the same individual that I had reported to a North American funding agency as having cheated us of our exact share in the conference fees. Yes, I remembered very well, she was two passengers ahead of me. So, that was why she was there beside the airport police while he was examining my things, gloating like a senora over my predicament. Probably, presupposing that all communists carry arms, that Hong Kong police immediately had gone into action, without even asking if the information was true or not.

The whole Hong Kong of three islands at that time was very wary of communists, as the People's Republic Of China was about to annex the country again after a century of British rule. Britain took over the reins of power there after defeating the Chinese in the Opium war???

My reminiscence was broken by the sounds of the footsteps. Three HK policemen in black uniform were marching together around the plaza, passing by groups of workers some seated and others standing by. Some were agog as to where they were headed for, while others continued playing cards on the pavement, as if trying to regard the incident as just an ordinary occurrence to any foreigner there.

I followed, feeling my instincts as a media person seeking out to the bottom of any scoop. Then I saw where they stopped: in front of a brown woman, with a basket of bananas in front of her. She was beautiful, dark-skinned, with big black eyes, and smiling!. She was smiling, yet a smile with shame that she had committed something very grave.

She bowed her head walking with the policemen who had whisked her away to the van that would bring her to the police precint.

Ano, ide-deport na siya?

Dadalhin yan sa police station.

Depende sa kaso yan. Kung wala siyang visa, maaari.
Pero kung meron, fine lang yan.

Bakit, ano ba ang kasalanan niya?

Bawal magtinda dito sa plaza.

Ano ang tinda niya?

Saging.

Pero bakit bawal?

Ano ka ba, hindi ka ba nagtatrabaho rito?

Hay naku, turista yan. Iha, alam mo naman dito, palaki ng mga puti. Bawal ang mag vendor-vendor ka sa kalye. Hindi paris sa atin. Puwede kang magtinda kahit sa'n mo gusto.

Yes at that time, in MetroManila vendors could sell anywhere; but now, the new chair of the MetroManila Development Authority had deemed it his crusade to crucify all vendors caught occupying sidewalks for their wares to be sold. How fast time flies, how quickly things change, I had told myself.

My own son used to have a kikiam stall situated at the steps of a building at Philcoa, the entrance to the Commonwealth Avenue going to the outskirts of Quezon City. His business was going well run by a simple maid, as he attended to it daily. He would drive all the way to Quiapo to buy the ingredients, and then the maid, sheltered in the house of his grandmother, would prepare everything, carry the supplies on her slingbag, and then with the water jug on the trolley would ride to Philcoa every late morning. Late because customers, mostly poor students of the State University with very little allowance, used to flock to her at that time to have their lunch. Yes, they only had kikiam and rice and then a glass of gulaman to gulp down as lunches.

The atmosphere in the HK plaza was suffocating, quite foggy. I tried being with the vendor to help her up to the vehicle, but the policemen motioned to me not to follow while swishing their arms. So, the girl followed by the police climbed the back of the jeep, and then drove away

Bakit siya nagtitinda pa?

E paanong magkakasya ang kita niya e ang daming mga anak sa ‘Pinas?

Balewala yang huli-huli na yan. Paglabas niyan, tingnan mo, magtitinda uli yan.

Aba, kapag tatlong beses ka nang nahuli, deported ka na.

May palugit pa rin.

Ganun na nga.

All migrant workers lose their human rights and adopt that of the foreign country’s unless a more humane bilateral agreement is struck between the originating and the receiving governments.

My flat, a small room full of books became heaven-sent as I retreated to it, where I was staying. I had come to Hong Kong to join a women’s conference of academicians. My other co-delegates were billeted in a hotel. No way could I afford the rates, so with the help of Arthur, an Australian guy working for an NGO in Australia, and living with his partner in a flat, I had been able to stay in the stockroom full of books. No problem, I told myself. I love books. I could spend the whole night reading them. . Arthur gave me the keys to the flat below them which contained the publications of the non-government organization that was helping migrants.

For many years already, I had been teaching women in Tondo how to read and write. I would produce reading materials and literacy books which would be funded by Arthur’s organization. These then would be given away to the women as complementary materials to the literacy sessions which I would conduct. Topics included how to know their bodies as women, how to take care of the environment, how to read and write from a feminist viewpoint, among others. Feminist literacy was a new method that I had developed in the course of reading Paulo Freire, the Latin American pedagogy writer. He introduced the idea of teaching the alphabet and then giving examples of words that were close to the lives of women. For example, in teaching the letter, “b” the learners write “babae” on the page. So seeing that word, the women would associate it with questions like, “Sino ang ilaw ng tahanan?” When they answer, “babae,” I would point to the word. So by association with the loaded meaning, the women could remember easily how it was written.

It was already night when I arrived the following day at her flat. I had had only a light dinner at the conference and had felt particularly tired as the memory of the woman vendor would cross my mind now and then. I opened and locked the room, and then wended through all the stocks of books and publications in the living room. Ah, my bed. How bouncy, how warm. If only for that, I could say that my trip to Hong Kong was really heavenly. Am I very lucky to have had Arthur as a friend. He reminded me of my former boyfriend in London, the accent, not the face. There was something about the British accent that I really find fascinating. It was as if I am listening to the real way of speaking English. Why after all, the Americans who came to the Philippines could trace their roots to England. Except that, many of the American migrants belonged to the lower classes, or were either subalterns and ex-prisoners wanting to have a new life in the so-called New World.

But he life of migrant workers could be truly very hard, very difficult. I surmised that even the grandparents of that new US president, an Afro-American, could have been so tragic, that his mother had endeavored to supplant her parent’s status and raise the family’s achievements by getting her own doctoral degree in anthropology.

Now, all over the world, Filipino migrant workers are finding jobs to eke out a living but taking advantage of educational opportunities is farthest from their mind, and/or could be highly unattainable. They just go through life, day-by-day, grinding daily to feed themselves and their families.

I knew how difficult the lives of domestic helpers abroad. Everyday, she would read in the papers about those who have been maltreated or murdered by their employes. This was also why, she had proposed a legislative measure to the labor committee chair to make their working status under live-out arrangement, no longer live-in. But as usual, it takes the bureaucracy many months before that can become a law in order to force the Labor Department to be sensitive to the plight of the helpers.

Is it so difficult to feel for them? Not really, if one had gone abroad and lived with them, or even seen them at those city plazas conglomerating to revive their sagging self-esteem among compatriots. How dehumanizing, how demeaning, I felt that the migrant workers propping up the economies of foreign countries would not even find a building for them to congregate in. In that Hong Kong city plaza, she saw them, “nakasalampak,” talking animatedly among each other, carrying bags of goods that they had bought from stores with night sales.

I approached one group and offered them a newsletter containing news opinions about migration. In the front page was a prayer meant to strengthen the inner selves of the workers. But she was readily asked, by one, who read the prayer, “Katolika ka ba?” “No, I am ecumenical. I pray wherever my feet take me. If I find myself wanting to pray, I go to the nearest church, regardless of religion.” The woman looked at her sideways, as if in doubt over the contents of the newsletter. But later on, she did buy a copy, only for P2. I could have given it away but she knew that if anything was free, the workers would not consider it valuable enough to buy.

I plopped down on the bed and in a few minutes, she was already asleep, feeling so tired from the many activities she had gone through.

Earlier at the conference, she had asked one of her co-delegates to stop combing her hair and putting make up while in front of the dining table while a foreign guest was delivering her speech at the podium. Instead of listening to her, the delegate continued doing her thing and then kept her comb and lipstick inside the bag. No, she was not listening at all to the speech. Who cares? She, a secretary to the President’s office in a university in the Philippines, was there to enjoy the honorarium and to be able to shop for the finest clothes, bags and shoes in Hong Kong.

Suddenly, I heard raps on the door. She thought they were only in her dream but the raps continued. Then she got up, and walked to the door. She asked, without opening it, “Who is it?” “Police.” “Why?” Then these people started speaking in Chinese. I immediately went by the window and called for Arthur who was living just above her room. “Arthur, some men want to come in here. They say they are from the police. Shall I let them in?”

“Yes, I, let them in, please. ” She went hesitatingly to the door, unlocked it, and as she was just opening the door, three men immediately barged in, going to the different parts of the flat. Then they searched even the windows. The men were speaking in Chinese. Then one said, “Passport, passport.” I went inside her room and got her pouch bag which she had placed under her pillow. She picked her passport and then went to the living room again just to emphasize to this uncouth bunch that she had legitimate reasons for being in Hong Kong. After leafing through her passport, the men retreated, while nodding at her. She immediately locked the door, rested her back on it and then heaved a sigh of relief. “When will these all end,” she said to herself.

I was so disgusted with the lack of manners of these police. But what can she do? She had felt very uncomfortable and alone in a land that was highly inhospitable to foreigners. Or maybe not all foreigners, only to those who look like the migrant workers. She was so thankful upon seeing Arthur the following night, carrying four bottles of beer, two for her and two for him which they finished in the course of exchanging pleasantries. Then Arthur became more serious.

“No, it was not you they were after. They probably just searched the place to see if an illegal migrant was here. Some tenants in this building could have alerted them that you were around. Since they did not know you, they had probably thought you were illegal.”

I wanted Arthur to embrace her at least and make her feel warm and safe But she was too shy to ask. She had always viewed physical proximity as anathema, especially since Arthur had his lived-in partner with him. She was drawn to his gentle ways but could not get herself to show an ounce of tenderness towards him, although she had an inkling that he had brought the beer to loosen up her uptightness.

Upon reaching the country. I readily sent a card to him and his girlfriend, thanking them for providing her with shelter through all that time. She picked a card with a painting of a woman and her child riding a card pulled by a carabao with the father on top. Arthur liked everything indigenous. His mind is no longer that of an intellectual whose interest in the arts could be just global. Everything connected with his work, has to have that national character pertinent to the people that he was serving. At the same time, I felt proud about sending him a scene that was still real in the Philippines since not many farms have been mechanized. Still, some farmers use the carabao for plowing the fields and the card depicted the farming family on their rest day, probably going to town to replenish their household supplies, or to bring the child to a doctor for check-up. One never would know what the artist had intended the subjects to be.

Published in Ani Journal of the Cultural Center of the Philippines

A few months after, I received a reply from Arthur with the letter postmarked Australia. Why he had gone back to his country. She immediately opened it and read the contents. “Dear I, I have split up with my lived-in partner. We have very great difference. She wants to have a child, but I don’t. I can’t imagine how anyone would want to add to the world’s population at this time when there is too much hunger, when food is scarce and medicines for health are very expensive. It is better this way, that we part peacefully. As she and I are still young, we would still be able to find our way in this world more successfully I hope., Love, Arthur.”

All the images of Hong Kong, the arrested domestic helper, the conference, the barging in of the police in the flat, came rushing in the mind of I. Finally, that evening of drinking beer with Arthur caught her attention more deeply. Why, why didn’t he say so that time?

Ah, he is really a gentleman, not forcing his way into her heart although he had known her to be separated from her husband. I held the letter close to her chest and then shut her eyes, mulling over how he would answer him. “Is there room for another person in her life?”