Bigotry on OFWs

This piece will be my first since I came from vacation last 2nd of June 2007. Due to several factors, I haven’t been able to write since May this year. Nevertheless, I’m back in a writing mood with unexplained anguish. Yesterday, I received an e-mail from a buddy, Jake, urging me to write on my blog in the form of a vengeance to a certain pig. Honestly, I was surprised what he means and with curiosity I downloaded and opened the attachment. Upon reading the article, I immediately understood what he meant. The pig he’d mentioned is the author in a column of a magazine, People Asia. Although physically the author is no doubt an overweight woman but I guess, the adjective referred by my chum to her is the unpleasant piece she wrote on OFWs whom she met in Dubai and in the airplane.

Malu Fernandez in her column “Fierce and Fabulous” narrated her trips from Boracay to Greece. I never knew that being a columnist, you are as highly paid that you can travel to any place that you’d fancy anywhere in the world. How I wish I pursued my high school guidance counselor’s advise to get a journalism degree rather than fulfilling my 6th grade teacher’s wish to become an engineer. In Boracay, she wrote that spraying Baygon everywhere nearly killed herself. I thought our featured “elite author” was staying in an air-conditioned villa rented by their group. Or maybe in Boracay, no matter how expensive your room is, mosquitoes are everywhere. Oh! Bad publicity for the premier tourist place in Central Philippines. Paging DOTC Secretary Ace Durano, can you please counter Ms. Fernandez pronouncement about Boracay? Believe me; she doesn’t like the beach in general not because she hates sand, bugs, etc. With her vital stats, who likes to wear a two-piece bikini? You know, it’s not a scene where you’re looking on Katrina Halili or Kristine Reyes at the beach.

Not contented in destroying Boracay’s tourism, she made a false narration about OFWs in Dubai. Inside airport premises, you can’t sell cell phones and perfumes if you’re a passenger! If she means those who are employed as saleslady in Duty-Free Shops, believe me, Ms. Fernandez envied them since they’re as good-looking as commercial models back in Philippines. But she’s referring to the passengers for sure coz she wanted to slash her wrist when trapped with them. And what’s wrong if you’re a DH as she mentioned? It’s an honorable job coz at the end of the day, they contributed a lot in improving financial difficulties of our country and mind you, they might have thrown in more tax to the government than Ms. Fernandez had. If the content of her column is written by a foreigner who had just encountered OFWs, maybe we’ll understand. But Ms. Fernandez is a Filipino citizen or maybe having dual citizenship earning a living back home. To write a side comment on OFWs in general is a bad investigative journalism unless People Asia is basically a tabloid. Ms. Fernandez had met only OFWs with a DH classification that’s why she feels superior to them. She never met for sure OFWs who drive fancy cars like Nissan Armada, Mercedes Benz models, Toyota Camry, Lumina, Caprice, and many more, in Middle East countries. Her knowledge on OFWs is limited only on Domestic Helpers, maybe because, minus her make-up and not so attractive cleavage, she looks like them. I never knew that AXE is a perfume; I thought it’s only for under-arm protection. But Ms. Fernandez is fond of watching Philippine TV commercials, I guess. Unless, she stays long in the Middle East, then she will definitely found out that buying top of the line perfumes is just a normal occurrence to OFWs.

Still as a writer, Ms. Fernandez should be sensitive in all her ideas. We live in a democracy and part of it is to write freely as we think but it doesn’t give you the authority to throw mud to human beings especially if it’s untrue and worse to your fellow kababayan. Her friends may find it funny but it is not to the majority of the OFWs. We opined that Ms. Fernandez column is not based on truthfulness but on the idea of just belittling the OFW community.

A fellow Cebuano, Roland G, intimated me this morning that the main reason for her indifferent column is an OFW might had mistaken her to be a DH in the plane, on her way home.