Cureless

What else do you call owning and manipulating other people’s lives without any objection from the concerned people but slavery? If the excuse for that action is goodwill, then, its meaning might be distorted for these people doing these acts.

For me, goodwill to other people is making them realize of their freedom, of their worth as persons. It’s not imposing on them what I know is right because everyone else has a different case. Although my parents may not have the same motive as I have with other people, they had made me realize that I’m free and responsible of myself.

The (collective) Filipino culture is a culture of slavery and social classes. Slave in my hometown’s lingo (and other Bicol towns as well) is “uripon”. Slavery is manifested in the way people from the lower classes (alipin, oripun, slaves) are sold to the upper social class (maharlika, timawa, freemen). I am very much aware that such culture still exists now, even in the modern age, where freedom is much valued and fought for.

Living and having connections with people from the province has made me witness my self-defined “modern slavery”. My mom’s family is not rich but undoubtedly, they have power over other families, especially their poor neighbors and relatives. My aunts help them go to schools, lend their families money, and adopt them as helpers (alalay) in exchange. These families, then, develop a certain kind of indebtness (utang na loob) towards them. It comes to a point that they’d even “sell” their sons/daughters just to “pay” for that certain debt. And I guess that is happening now to our maid.

I have often mentioned her in my blog as Michi. I rarely call her our maid because I never felt us totally having an employee to employer relationship. I know this happens to families who aren’t rich enough to have their maids dressed in uniform. She’s more of a friend than an employee.

What happend to her sister (who got pregnant by some unscrupulous piece of groin) wasn’t her fault. And her family’s obligating her to pay for the hospital bills now that the sister is close to delivering twins. She now has no choice but ask for an “advance” payment, since my aunt has already lent the family the money without asking Michi her permission to release it.

Now my grandma, after hearing the story joked about her being our maid forever unless her future would-be husband would bail her out of debt. It was not a joke for me. The uripons before are also sold to their prospective husbands before released from their master’s slavery.

Now they’re asking me to have Michi sign a paper that she would pay the debt of her family to one of my aunts. That totally pisses me off. I’d gladly fire her or recommend her to other “employers” if that’s the case. In the first place, my mom, who’s the real employer, wasn’t informed about it. Secondly, my education highly opposes it. Where’s freedom there while it is clear slavery? Third, do my aunts think of what they’re doing an act of goodwill? I think that is highly questionable. I understand the part of “goodwill” there but the responsibility shouldn’t at all be burdened to Michi. They act as if they owned her life, and thus, decide for her.

I asked Michi why she submits to this kind of policy. She’s afraid. She depends too much on us that she might not like living with other families.

The more I hear of this, the more I am really determined to “sell her off” to other families where she won’t be forced to act as if these people own her.