Social work is a precarious practice. At Maligaya House, the majority of our work is providing legal support for Filipina women to petition their ex-Japanese lovers for child support and/or official recognition for their child. We are partners with a couple other organizations which offer support and counseling to the women in question. And I have no doubt that a lot of them have very terrible stories to tell but being a NGO centered around legal recourse we have to convey the stories in the driest way possible so that the lawyers can understand. The majority of our work consists of translating and relaying documents between here and our Tokyo office. It can be quite boring and office work makes me miss landscaping, but compared to other social work I enjoy this. I get to translate Japanese all day which can be very tiring but is good practice for me. Another aspect of this job is the occasional house visit which I also enjoy; mainly for the reason that I can get outside and leave this cramped office for a bit. I also like to go to new places and its nice when the office foots the bill. We also go to the Japanese embassy with the Filipina ladies to submit the nationality application because it almost impossible to do if you cannot read or speak Japanese. There are other aspects of this organization but there is one point of which I would like to talk about. Every month we have the Japanese Filipino Children who receive scholarships that Maligaya House organized for them come to office on a Sunday and participate in some activities. There are some other students volunteers that come from the University of the Philippines who study social work come in and do some sort of workshops. This all sounds sort of harmless and fun but my first experience left me almost infuriated.
You should keep in mind that I couldn't understand any Tagalog at that point. So we are all sitting in a decent size room with about 15 or so kids from the ages of 9 to 20 with myself and three student social workers. They were talking for a long time and were doing some sort of role play that I did not really understand but I understood enough to know they were discussing their family situation. I was asked to join as standing in a line with a few other kids who were involved in a role play. I was chosen to represent the kids father and placed me symbolically far away from the other kids who were acting as the other members of the family. Now the sad thing is that all of these kids have one thing in common, they either never met their father or he left and does not want anything to do with them. This is one aspect of their lives that I cannot relate too since my parents were always there for me throughout my life but I try and sympathize with their situation.
As the girl from UP was drilling, at leas that's how it appeared, the kid about his family in front of everyone and gesturing to me, which I think meant she was talking about his father, the kid burst into tears in front of everyone. I was totally dumbfounded because up until that point I was just nodding with a dumb smile trying to give the impression I wasn't bored out of my mind and then as soon I noticed that the situation was far more severe than I had imagined, I tried to react accordingly by changing my expression but its not like I could offer anything else since I didn't even know what was going on. Before this point I thought this whole workshop was one of those waste of time activities that I used to do as kid that the adults involved thought somehow justified its own value but then I saw the sinister side of it. Some of these kids and their mothers traveled an hour or two to get here on a Sunday, probably out of gratitude for what this NGO offered them, but that does not justify humiliating them in front of everyone and especially not in front of me who at that time had arrived maybe the week before. I am not saying that sharing your sorrow or emotions with a group of people in a similar situation is a bad thing and I do give the kid respect for having the courage to cry in front of a group of people he didn't even know. It is definitely not easy to be emotionally honest with the close to you, much less complete strangers.
After that session, I was so angry that I had to leave and smoke a couple cigarettes to maintain my cool. I spoke to the girl social worker involved with that session and she said that she might have pushed too hard but that overall it was very productive. When I started to question the need of these kind of activities at an NGO that really only offers legal support and as far as I knew didn't have pretensions as being a center of psychological therapy, I was given a course in the “science” behind social work. I was told that these sessions were vital for the JFC (Japanese-Filipino Children) to come to terms with their bi-racial status here in the Philippines. I didn't push the subject anymore then that but I still had a bitter taste in my mouth.
Its hard for me to explain why hearing other people's problems or at least hearing somebody pry somebody else's problems out of them made me so angry. I was reflecting on this later on that night and I came to the conclusion that throughout my childhood up to the present it has been extremely rare for me to approach anybody about my problems, and trust me I had a lot of them. I had a tough time through university in a lot of ways but when the stress got overwhelming or my heart was broken, I made a concerted effort to maintain my composure and never let anyone, even my family, know what I was going through. Some would call this mentally unhealthy, and that may be the case, but as a result of this I dealt with the majority of my mental and emotional trials on my own. I would like to believe that I gained some strength from this but probably it just contributed to me drinking and smoking more and problems later in life. I also have a big problem with psychology as a discipline which is related to this but I will not delve into that here. But just because I maintain this “tough” face doesn't mean I don't want to hear other people's problems. I try to help and understand when I can but there was something about watching someone prying into what is obviously a sensitive subject (his dad walking on him and his mom) in front of an audience that struck a cord. The students come here to complete their field work for their courses on social work and they are graded based on their performance so I can't help but feel that these kids are getting used as sort of emotional guinea pigs. Its like the students use the fact that these kids feel obliged to come here as a good enough reason to impose on them a public and painful counseling session. Like I said, I think it is a good thing that the JFC have an opportunity to share their feelings and experiences with other kids like them but they should not be forced to explain their personal anguish in front of me. If I was in that situation I would have been outraged to have to discuss my problems in front of some sauce from the opposite side of the world. I mean that is just absurd. It felt as though I was at a dinner party and someone complained that their steak was too dry and so called over a servant of the house, cut them, and used their own blood to soak the meat. The whole thing felt unnecessary and forced and ruined what seemed like a harmless, marginally fun day. I also have a problem with the idealism that gives people the motivation to get involved in social work in the first place. The attitude that a few pointed questions and emotional release will raise the children in question to a higher level of existence and happiness is too far-fetched for me. I cannot tell whether my animosity for idealism comes from a cynical realism or a petty sort of cynicism but at the end of the day, what's the difference?
I am not going to make a final diagnosis for the failings of social work in general or that I think it is essentially a bad thing. Perhaps the kid grew from that day and maybe I am the only one with the problem. These are all possible and I know what millions of people have benefited from various kinds of social work. But perhaps my boss silently does agree with me since I have been responsibility to organize the future meetings. I've decided to change gears and teach Japanese, Japanese culture, and perhaps some English on the corner for those who need it. I hope to make the whole thing a bit more enjoyable and less trying on the kids.
I feel I need to comment on this.
ReplyDeleteI am pretty sure you felt so bad about the situation because you were not told what was going on and were not prepared for what happened - playing the role of an absent father. That was a serious mistake of the people organizing the event. I don't think they should have asked you to do it without explaining what was going on. You could not help and almost became part of the problem.
However that does not mean that encouraging people to express their feelings about bad situations is necessarily a bad thing. The whole concept of support groups in which people who are going through a similar and difficult experience share their feelings and trials is built on the premise that only people who are experiencing the same thing as you can fully appreciate what you are going through and can help you. So the kid who cried may well have received support from the other kids there who had gone through a similar experience. I think this can be a very valuable thing for many people. I am a bit like you (perhaps you have it from me) in that I am not big on sharing difficult emotions, but I do not think that is a good thing. I think that it is important to talk about things that are festering inside and get them out.