HOMEWARD BOUND

(Mother and Son, my favorite painting of Amorsolo)

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On July 2, 1999, I arrived in Oz on a permanent migrant skilled visa, ending my more than six year career as an OFW in the middle east. Two years after that I applied for naturalization, changing my passport and my citizenship. . . As with thousands and millions more Filipinos all over the world, I fought and sold my body and soul for a better life, prostituting my body and mind (and whatever's left of it) to foreign lands and economies, and sending back home majority of my earnings. . As it was ten years ago, this OFW syndrome will continue to happen in the next decade and maybe further into the next millennium for the next generation of Filipinos. . We must- have to leave and work in far away countries. We will enslave ourselves willingly amidst silent pains of loneliness, of homesickness. Even get raped and violated by our masters. Trampled like doormats. We will always be the subject of discrimination and ridicule by people who were lucky because they were born in richer countries, and thus become masters of us ... We dance naked and smile while our tears are falling ... and thinking only of the remittances we could make the following day. We would be left for dead like zombies ... and then again, rise the following day to work - as we are bound by love and responsibility. We will carry on. Must carry on .... although our hands stink from wiping the asses of people not related to us. . . Why? Because we are born in a place and time when we have no choice but to leave and migrate somewhere and anywhere in order to make better of ourselves and to others who are left behind. We are accidental tourists perhaps, and accidental martyrs.

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I am one in a million of lost souls that are scattered around the world, perpetually longing to be home, to be where you are most ALIVE, to swim in the waters of your umbilical cord, to laugh and be carefree with your kins, to sleep like prince and princess every night in the land of your birth on the cold bamboo floor and blows the candle goodnight ... for a new and beautiful day!

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Ironically, when you are back home, you'd take the next plane out of the country. To be back again and again in a strange land where you (might really try assimilating and living into) but still be forever a worker, a stranger, a perpetual visitor of your own choice. You can change the color of your hair, the twang of your tongue, the clothes that you wear, - but there are things that are permanently tatooed in your body and cannot be erased or undone - like the color of your skin and the beating of your heart. Like the type of food that you will now and again crave for. Like your childhood memories that will forever haunt you in your dreams and will ultimately bring you home.

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So no matter how clean, advanced, beautiful and comfortable life could be somewhere - you may even consider it a paradise on earth - but it will be an empty place! It is like watching a movie.... You won't hear bells ringing and children playing on the streets. You won't see old toothless people dancing and smiling at you. You won't hear Sisas in the streets looking for Basilio and Crispin ... and your heart and soul is lost.

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There is no other place like HOME even if it is really HELL out there!