A Nation of Servants

A great hullabaloo it caused when Chip Tsao’s column entitled “The War at Home” was punlished in a Hong Kong magazine. In what clearly appeared to be tongue-in-cheek to this OFW anyway, Tsao stated that the Philippines didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance in the country’s claim to a group of islands in the South China Sea so long as they could hold hostage the large number of Filipina maids in Hong Kong. “There are more than 130,000 Filipina maids working at $3,580-a-month cheap labor in Hong Kong. As a nation of servants, you don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter.”

Turned out his domestic helpers were from Indonesia but he added: “I summoned Louisa, my domestic assistant who holds a degree in international politics from the University of Manila, hung a map on the wall, and gave her a harsh lecture. I sternly warned her that if she wants her wages increased next year, she had better tell every one of her compatriots in Statue Square on Sunday that the entirety of the Spratly Islands belongs to China.”

A firestorm predictably erupted, principally arising from the very prominent political sectors responsible for transforming us into, well, a nation of servants. Nothing to be proud of but nothing to be ashamed about either. We overseas Filipinos are everywhere, scrambling to provide better futures for our families because we just have to do it. We don’t have much time for self-pity, we just suck it up and keep on serving. Back home in the Philippines, you will hear some fellow Filipinos denigrate those physicians who became nurses and how they were now reduced to wiping the posteriors of foreigners. Unfortunately, in our attempt to justify failure, we frequently console ourselves by imagining an even less desirable existence elsewhere. I’ve never been embarrassed to declare that I’ve wiped my share of foreign posteriors.

We must, as a nation accept our lot. Not unlike devastated Japan after their surrender in World War II, we need to remember Emperor Hirohito’s admonition to his country: “for all the generations to come by enduring the unavoidable and suffering what is insufferable”. “Beware most strictly of any outbursts of emotion that may engender needless complications, of any fraternal contention and strife that may create confusion, lead you astray and cause you to lose the confidence of the world.”

“Let the entire nation continue as one family from generation to generation, ever firm in its faith of the imperishableness of its divine land, and mindful of its heavy burden of responsibilities, and the long road before it. Unite your total strength to be devoted to the construction for the future. Cultivate the ways of rectitude, nobility of spirit, and work with resolution so that you may enhance the innate glory of the Imperial State and keep pace with the progress of the world.”