My First Story – Pinoy Expat – “My Brother” – Part 1

It was on my mother’s eightieth birthday, seven years after my father died, when I got to talk to my brother on the phone from Saudi Arabia.  Nine of  twelve children in our family were present except for three siblings who were based in the US and the Middle East. He said he’d  be coming home soon for Christmas.

After a week, we received a news about my brother that he was rushed to the hospital in his place of work, then heard of him no more, a few weeks after that incident.

Family members were all worried and two of my sisters tried to communicate with his employer about his true situation. It took them more than three weeks to coordinate with the head office where he worked. News came a few days more that my brother had his first stroke while on the job, almost a month after my mother’s birthday.

We were all supposed to be excited for his homecoming, but things didn’t go well for him. He was half-paralyzed. It was before New Year of 2014, that me and my husband were asked to be the welcome party for him who will be arriving from Saudi Arabia. At last, he will be back home, but on a wheel chair. We needed to borrow a wheel chair from my mother-in-law, but thanks to the employer’s initiative to donate one for my brother.

On the day of his arrival, me and my husband proceeded to a fine dining restaurant where we reserved a dinner buffet table for six, two nuns, one is my sister, another sister, me and my husband and him.

When they arrived I did not fully recognize him because he was once a medium built healthy looking man. But I saw an old frail man, with sun burned skin and  who can barely walk, held by the two nuns. I felt so saddened, about to cry but I held back my tears.  Immediately, I tried to change my mood and smiled at him, welcomed him and my sisters. I showed them to our buffet table. It was although a relief for us, his family that finally he reached home even with his condition, a half paralyzed body. He was trying to walk and act normally, I knew he was trying to go back to his once normal condition. I think it’s a long way to go and so much effort needed to do on his part with enough courage and determination.

Well, this is only the first part of my story about one of my Pinoy Expat siblings, my brother, the eldest boy in our family, who came back and forth to the Middle East to work for more than seventeen years. I am proud of my brother. To be continued.

 

Why Are Expatriates Not Migrant Workers?

An ”’expatriate”’ or ”’expat”’ is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than that of the person’s upbringing, to work outside his fatherland. Are these professionals or skilled workers sent abroad by their companies, then why can’t they be called MIgrant Workers? Are there any difference or is it plain semantics? Is the difference found in common usage when it usually comes down to socio-economic factors, so skilled professionals working in another country are described as expatriates, whereas a manual laborer who has moved to another country to earn more money might be labelled an ‘immigrant’ or ‘migrant worker’?.But there seems to be no set definition and usage varies with context. What if the same person may be seen as an “expatriate” by his home country and a “migrant worker” where he works, and when he retires abroad will it make him an “expatriate”?.

In the US history during the 19th century and early 20th century, many Americans,perhaps in the thousands, were drawn to European cultural centers, mostly in Germany and France. There are also great authors like Henry James, for instance, adopted England as his home while Ernest Hemingway, lived in Paris. Are they not considered as migrant workers? There seems to be no difference, or is it?

 

My Dream Job Abroad

I once dreamed of working in another country with the thought of going beyond my place to explore new ones, beautiful as I perceived, and learn about people with different culture in another horizon. I thought I wanted to discover new things about life and work with a new foreign company. I also thought of meeting my future husband in that country and raise a family different from my origin. Well, it was just a dream which remained unfulfilled. I am now happily married to a wonderful man and have two amazing sons, of my same origin. I had a wonderful job in a company where I worked for more than two decades which helped raise my family modestly. And now that my sons are young adults, soon to raise their own families, I still have some thoughts of how my life would be if I fulfilled what I once dreamed of in my youthful years. Maybe, I can still continue dreaming but this time with my sons to fulfill those dreams.