Feedback from Canada and Making Choices

Since last May I have begun compiling my columns for Cordillera Today in a personal blog named after this corner. For me the blog merely serves as a personal virtual notebook or folder for my columns. The blog, however, contains only my columns since last May. If I have the time, I will retrieve the rest and compile them in just one virtual package.

As a personal virtual folder, the blog, I thought, could not be viewed by others. So I didn’t expect feedback or comments about what I have been compiling in my lemongrass tea blog. But Google has a way of showing and sharing the blog with others so some of my pieces got a few comments.

Somebody from Canada, for example, reacted to a column last August, “On Leaving and Staying.” In that column, I said, among other things, that I would not give up on this country, despite all the misfortune in governance we all face. I also said some were pushing me to find work overseas but I declined, saying I could not imagine myself working in some sweatshop there and that I could not stand being lonely and away from my family.

I also said I turned down some suggestion for me and my family to migrate overseas because I could not afford to cut off my cultural and family roots, among other reasons.

Let me reprint this feedback from a Filipino migrant in Canada who, except for giving a website address which I have yet to access, did not identify himself or herself. Thus:

“Just to give you some comfort. Over here in Canada, a lot of new immigrants do not end up in sweat shops. At least here in North America, for as long as you work hard, you can attain anything.

“I came here as a nanny in 1988 and abandoned my accounting career in the Philippines and never looked back. I left the country just after having obtained my Philippine CPA (Certified Public Accountancy) designation for a better future here in Canada.

“After working for two years as a nanny, the Canadian government granted me an immigrant status and was given the opportunity to work in any field I wanted, sky was the limit. I decided to pursue an accounting career and was able to purchase my own home. I was able to sponsor my parents who are currently living a very satisfactory life.

“But most of all, apart from material possessions, I found peace and security (politically and economically). I recently went home to the Philippines to attend my grandmother's funeral and after seeing the current Philippine situation, the more I felt strongly about my decision to have left the country.”

In that last column, I also said that those who leave have their own reasons and that I didn’t and wouldn’t fault them for leaving.

In this age, as long as we have some skill or expertise in whatever field, we can make choices. We can opt to stay put in this archipelago of 7,100 islands, come high or low tide, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions or super typhoons. Or we can choose to go overseas and reinvent ourselves there.

But the key is education – real education, which can help equip us with the necessary skill, maturity, the right attitude, and the character to be able to work and relate with other people in whatever environment.

Canada and other countries in the developed world no doubt offer better opportunities for people who have skills and brains. Compared to the Philippines, these countries definitely give more just compensation to well-invested efforts and talents. As a result, people in these countries are motivated to excel.

There was this Filipina who, after not being able to find work here after finishing a mass communications degree, got a job as a nanny in Singapore. Since she had writing skills, she wrote a bestseller, which was aptly titled, “Maid in Singapore.” She eventually moved to Canada where she now works as a writer and filmmaker. She is Crisanta Sampang, one of overseas Filipino workers whose writing talent – besides hard work and perseverance – brought her to greater heights.

So again, the key is education. If well-educated, Filipinos applying as nannies or factory workers need not become nannies or sweatshop workers forever. Like Crisanta Sampang and that person who gave a feedback to one of our columns, they can metamorphose into more accomplished persons. They can even transcend the current government’s program to produce “super-maids.” They can prove to the world that they can also write prose or poetry other than just changing diapers and cleaning bedpans.