The worst thing that you can feel is to be apart from your family. Missing birthday parties, reunions, visiting a sick aunt, Christmas, new years, name it... when you work overseas, you miss a lot from home... including your family, friends, food, your own room, your dog... everything is different when you are in a foreign land and suddenly you feel alone.
You try to ease the loneliness and the pain just to be able to send money back home. You try to squeeze your budget and save as much as you can to be able to support the family you left behind. Thinking, if I save just enough, given 2-3 years, I will be back home to be with my family. But that doesn't happen, does it? The question now is, why?
I have a lot of relatives and friends who have been working overseas for the past years. some were able to save some money and buy themselves their own homes and even buy themselves up-to-date gadgets and appliances to be used back home. But why is it that its not enough and that they have to constantly leave the country to work?
The answer: The entire extended family back home expects to be fed by the hard earned money of that One (1) OFW.
Harsh? yes. but its the reality. One day I was watching the news, of a Woman who came from Japan carrying her two children escaping the dangers of nuclear radiation was interviewed upon her arrival in the airport... she was asked if she will still return to Japan inspite of the danger... she answered "yes, i will go back, i need to work, wala kaming kakainin dito, kailangan ko mag trabaho"... and to think that she was welcomed by a ton of family members on her arrival... she was the only one expected to work and feed the family... so i sat for a while and think... what on earth was her family back home (in Manila) doing while she was working her ass off in Japan? Don't they think that if they work together they will be able to survive instead of just depending on ONE OFW in the family?
We always blame others, including the government for our shortcomings... (not that I'm saying the government can't do something)... but I think that maybe... before we start pointing our fingers and blaming others, we should start and look on ourselves first.
Families cannot just depend on that ONE OFW to feed the entire clan. That is just my point.
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