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June 16, 2000 VOL. 29 NO. 23 | SEARCH ASIAWEEK
For some Filipinos, the stress of going overseas to work can be too much. When they get back home, there is someone to talk to By RAISSA ROBLES Manila Maria Dolor had been behaving strangely on the plane bringing her back from Kuwait. By the time the 38-year-old domestic helper disembarked at Manila's Ninoy Aquino International Airport, there was clearly enough wrong with her for an airline official to decide to hand her over to a desk manned by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA). There, Dolor flew into a rage when the assistants refused to hand back her passport. Duty nurse Neal Chua had seen this too many times before: Dolor was having a psychotic attack. Protesting, she was helped into an ambulance and taken to the Sunrise Hill Therapeutic Community, a private center in suburban Manila whose founder, prominent psychiatrist Leonardo Bascara, has made it his mission to help workers returning to the Philippines with mental problems. Last year, the center handled 72 cases intercepted at the airport -- almost certainly just a fraction of the true problem. OWWA administrator Eleuterio Gardiner says this dark side of overseas contracting is not as well monitored as, say, the number of workers who die abroad. The full extent of the problem is further masked by the fact that most families cover up mental illness because of its social stigma. Dolor (not her real name) returned to the Philippines May 1 -- the first Labor Day of the New Millennium, which President Joseph Estrada has dedicated to the country's "modern-day heroes" -- the overseas contract workers. Like most of those who had gone before her, Dolor started out at Sunrise Hill as an x-file. Psychiatrist and administrator Evangeline de la Fuente says: "When overseas workers get here, we have no history on them. All we get are very disturbed patients. When the family comes, they don't know anything either." But with the aid of antipsychotic drugs, a regular routine that includes games, song, dance and counseling, plus the comfort of a familiar tongue, most patients can be drawn out enough to talk about their problem. Eight days after her return from working with a family in Kuwait, Dolor tells Asiaweek: "I experienced many things -- not eating and always getting hit." There are long silences. Her narrative jumps around and sometimes makes little sense. She talks of having to care for three girls, aged six, eight and 13, with the youngest physically disabled by an accident. On top of this, she says she had each day to clean four large rooms filled with "difficult items," all crystal, because she was the only maid trusted not to break them. She reveals she got into hair-pulling fights with her Indian co-workers after scolding one of them for using the same cloth to wipe the floor and the dinner plates. "We'll all get sick because of you," she says she told them. The more Dolor talks, the more her stories become jumbled. She recalls "an Egyptian who's a Filipina recruiter" who slapped her in a row over food. Then she switches in mid-sentence to a trip with her employers to Dubai, where she says she had a migraine attack and was taken to hospital. "They wanted to inject me in order to end my life because my employer had praised my work after viewing it through cameras hidden all over the house." Dolor is clearly still unwell. In these circumstances, if the symptoms do not clear up in three months, the patient could slip into schizophrenia, Bascara says. What causes the psychotic attacks? Apart from genetic predisposition, Bascara blames stress brought on by any one of a variety of factors -- a sudden change in environment, culture shock, abrupt departure from a close-knit home, high expectations from the family, overwork, verbal or physical abuse, non-payment of salary, money problems and family complications. Adds de la Fuente: "The family usually sends abroad the cream of the crop. Imagine their reaction on finding out that their only hope of climbing out of poverty has landed in a hospital instead of earning lots of money." Some overseas workers snap early. Others, like Luisa Calawen (not her real name), can go for many years before breaking. Separated from her husband and left with a daughter, she went to Singapore as a domestic helper in 1985. She was happy until last year, when her long-time employer died and she began to work for an elderly couple living in a three-floor apartment and owning two other rental flats. She says they expected her to clean all three homes. For breakfast, Calawen, 44, says she was given a loaf of bread that had to last two weeks. Lunch was her employers' leftovers and she was not allowed dinner until her 17-hour day was finished. She returned to the Philippines in April this year and was admitted to Sunrise Hill the same day, convinced that her employers had been trying to poison her. When her relatives collected her four days later, she said: "Maybe it was just my imagination." Last year, more than one out of every four cases handled by Sunrise Hill involved workers returning from Taiwan. Gardiner blames the high placement fee of at least $2,400, often paid upfront to Taiwanese brokers, for three-year contracts of about $440 a month. Some workers get into chronic debt, sometimes selling their homes to pay the fee. The stress of paying it all back, with something left over for the family in the Philippines, can be too much. Once they leave Sunrise Hill, usually after a period ranging from just one day to two months, the broken heroes are lost to follow-up counseling. A pretty teenager whose passport falsely says she is 25 is back in Japan as an entertainer after being raped there in January last year. "I can't be raped anymore because you have strengthened my spirit," she wrote in a recent letter to Bascara, who treated her for schizophrenic disorder. Even Maria Dolor, who discharged herself against medical advice, has put her torment in Kuwait behind her. She is planning to return overseas to take her chances with another family she has never met. Write to Asiaweek at mail@web.asiaweek.com
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