Marifel: At Home and Waiting to Move On

A few weeks ago I wrote a story about Marifel, a wonderful domestic worker who cared for my kids while I lived in Singapore for five years.

The story, published here on Medium, got 60,000 views and led to a TV appearance on the Philippines current affairs programme Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho on GMA7, for me and Marifel.

I finished writing the story and published it before I left Singapore in June, with no big expectations of it. It was really my way of saying ‘thank you’ to her. When I arrived in Amsterdam I was sitting down answering questions such as ‘Why did you care so much about Marifel and her family?’ and ‘Do you still sing Hey Jude?’ (a reference to the video I posted in the story).

The response to this article was astonishing: my inbox got flooded with messages from all over the world, mostly in support of domestic workers like her, but also thanking us for being so kind to her.

There was one incredibly personal email from a woman who used to be a domestic worker herself. Messages rolled in from the Philippines, too, many of them from men wanting to say ‘Thank you.’ Marifel got lots of kind messages too, wishing her well for her next job in Hong Kong, with an offer of help when she arrives.

But life has moved on. Well, for us it has. For her she is now waiting. She has to jump through a few administrative hoops before she can start her new job in August. She has to complete a medical and training before she can leave the Philippines — which is standard for domestic workers — but this involves regular trips from her home in the province of Pandan, Antique to Ilo Ilo and back (a 200km round trip). It is both stressful and tiring.

As the breadwinner she needs to be working, but she is in a state that is very familiar to migrant workers in Singapore and Hong Kong: limbo.

If you’re a migrant worker, services in host countries are generally slower. That is part of the price you pay for being a third class citizen in a country that needs your help. You can often find yourself forced into a bureaucratic quagmire, without any means of escape, with your life put on hold.

Before I left Singapore I met a Filipina domestic worker who had spent two years waiting for the abuse case against her employer to be resolved by the Singapore judicial system (I will post this story soon). She was in limbo. During that time she wasn’t allowed to work and she lived in a safe house with more than 50 other women in the same situation. There was nothing she could do but wait, which meant no money was going home. “I don’t know when I am going to get out of here,” she told me.

The worse thing is that this can happen with relative ease: there is an empathy fatigue around migrants. People in Singapore will get more angry about an MRT (train) breakdown than, say, an employer taking a folded chair to a domestic worker’s back, smashing her head against a wall or burning her with a hot spoon (these are details taken from recent cases to have been through Singapore’s courts).

Labour laws are shamefully stacked in favour of employers and domestic workers like Marifel, who are trying to improve their lives and their family’s, are being routinely ignored by policymakers.

The reason I wrote the story about Marifel was because she is truly one of life’s gems, she is a beautiful ray of light, and she deserves more recognition for the huge sacrifices she made to find work in Singapore.

I wanted to paint a picture of her to those who didn’t know her: Something which didn’t depict her as the victim of a cruel system, but an empowered woman who does an amazing job every single day, despite all of the obstacles. More stories that champion the brilliance of migrant workers might counter the awful narrative of abuse and neglect.

In Singapore, you can still prevent a domestic worker from going home if you want — you just tell her “No, you can’t go home”. You can still deny them a weekly day off (the government made a day off mandatory in 2013 but allowed employers to pay them to work) and you can confiscate her mobile phone so she can’t call home. They are forced to undertake six-monthly medical examinations — no other foreign workers in Singapore have to do this — and if they get pregnant (no they don’t get maternity leave), they get fired and deported.

Some are forced to share bedrooms, some sleep under the watchful gaze of CCTV cameras, some have private investigators tailing them when they go out. And all of this in civilised Singapore.

Interviews I did with NGOs on this subject usually/always ended with a weary acknowledgement that Singapore was under no obligation to act. Even though it could possibly lead Asian nations on this issue, it has carefully chosen not to. That was the cut and thrust of it.

So who can change this situation? Well, there are plenty of good employers — I know lots personally — but the only thing that will change this depressing status quo are more stories that celebrate the mums, daughters, wives and sisters who make the painful journey to foreign lands for work and why they are important.

Only when employers are forced to see domestic workers as humans who have the same life motivations as them — who bleed and cry just like they do — will they (and their governments) change their behaviour.

It’s a long road, but there are enough people who care in a city like Singapore to shame the ones that don’t. I am convinced of that. They are the key to change.

A version of this article first appeared on Coconuts Manila