On Volunteering

When I was asked to give a speech about volunteering I was very excited because I thought it would be a good opportunity to inspire people but I quickly realized I really had no idea what to say. Up until that point I never thought deeply about my life as a volunteer and so I did not prepare anything for that speech except for somehow inserting Pittsburgh and the Steelers. I have become reflective lately about what exactly I am doing here and with my life.

At this point I volunteer for two NGOs, one is Maligaya House which I wrote about before but I will explain my daily life a bit more so you and myself included can get a better understanding. My day to day work is actually quite boring. I mean my NGO offers legal support to these Filipino women and the majority of my work is translated Japanese documents into English and occasionally vice-versa. If you think that translating Filipino birth certificates into Japanese for 8 hours is fun then well you might as well just get a job as a bureaucrat. When I first arrived I was struck by just how hard it is to sit in an office and work on a computer all day. I got this weird twitch in my eye and it was very hard for me to get up in the morning. Simultaneously it was hard for me to get accustomed to the Philippines. I was constantly sweating in the heat, I would get weird pains in my muscles maybe from the heat, the massive amount of pollution and noise is not easy to get used to, and overall I did not know why I had come here in the first place. Over time however I began to get used to Maligaya House and developed a love for the Philippines. In a sense I'm not a very good volunteer because I didn't gave any thought about the struggles of Japanese-Filipino children before I arrived. So unlike normal volunteers I am not idealistically motivated. I have seen quite a few interns and volunteers come to and leave Maligaya House by now and presently we are pretty much stripped bare. There is only myself, my boss, and a social worker that works there. We have some Japanese exchange students come in occasionally but only about once a week or so. Almost all of the volunteers that I met were Japanese girls that felt compassion for the Japanese-Filipino children and their condition. Throughout my time here I have also grown to care about these kids and their mothers.

One thing about this job is that I meet very unfortunate women and children abandoned by the husband/father. Being a young guy I never gave much thought to condition of women and what affects their lives. Now almost on a daily basis I am confronted with these women and their broken families and you can really see the damage caused. Filipinos are not one to complain and it is quite rare for them to really breakdown in front of me. They usually try to maintain a good face but it is obvious of the struggles they go through.

Occasionally, I go on house visits with my co-worker to analyze their living conditions and meet their family. Usually they live in modest homes with three generations living under one roof. The families are always warm with us when we come and usually prepare food. It's rare for me to meet a client who actually has a job. Unemployment is rampant here and it seems to be the case that they had cast their hopes on this Japanese guy but it did not work out. There are lots of reasons why the guy would abandon his wife and child. For our clients it is not usually the case that they met just once or a few times and became pregnant and the guy runs away from his responsibility. The sad thing is that a lot of our clients were married and he either used to live with her and her family in the Philippines and was fully aware of the child. I can understand the fear of commitment by guy who was on vacation and inadvertently got a girl pregnant but I have no sympathy for those that walk away from their responsibilities as a father or husband.

Of course the woman is emotionally devastated and the kids has to grow up without a father but this is really a blow to the entire family. The Philippines is a poor country and if a member of a family can get married to a guy from a wealthy country then the whole family sees this as an opportunity to a better life.

Anyway, I don't want to get too cheesy but it'll suffice to say that I am moved by the women and children that I work with. Now my second volunteering at Visayan Forum is very different. Visayan Forum is dedicated to fighting human trafficking. It's a noble cause. Human trafficking is one of the most despicable aspects of the world. It can sometimes lead to virtual slavery for the victims or at least some sort of exploitation. It's pretty terrible and its the third largest black market in the world today; behind both drugs and weapons. It's practiced by unscrupulous individuals who exploit the vulnerability of poor and uneducated people. They usually promise them something great but if the victims go along then they can quickly realize that they are not going to become a waitress in Paris but end up in a brothel in the Ivory Coast as one group Filipino women found out recently. Now the problem with this issue is that there is always going to be people migrating to find work and I heard from a guy that one third of the GDP of the Philippines comes from migrant workers who go to richer countries to work as housemaid or something like this. I met a family where one woman works as a housemaid in Singapore is able to support a family of 6 back in the Philippines on that income alone. So in this case I think she found a good opportunity to support her extended family but then where do you draw the line between exploitation and migrant labor since by definition immigrant labor must be cheaper than if the firms hired locally? That's a tough one but I do feel that the government could at least try to protect its citizens that work abroad but at same time this exportation of labor is not beneficial for the Philippine economy. At the same time, the demand exists because of a lack of jobs and opportunities here so it's a kind of which came first the chicken or the egg scenario. Will the Philippine government always be unable to foster job growth and entrepreneurship as long as the qualified workers are constantly looking to work outside the country or is it the government's fault for not protecting the local industry and remaining passive hundreds of thousands of Filipinos are forced to find work elsewhere? As always, it is more complicated then this.

Yeah so Visayan Forum helps raise awareness of the problem of human trafficking in vulnerable areas and has half-way houses for the victims to help them get back on their feet. Some of the victims really go through terrible sometimes like there was a Filipino woman who worked as a house-maid in Saudi Arabia that was tortured and murdered by the family she was taking care of. Interestingly and tragically a similar story happened recently with two Indonesian house-maids in Saudi Arabia. I don't know what that says about Saudi Arabia but people here are not happy.

Now my role for Visayan Forum has absolutely nothing to do with this. I just teach Japanese to Filipino kids in a kind of poor neighborhood on Saturday mornings. It's nice and I like the kids. They aren't really kids actually, they are from 15 to 20 years old. They all have an interest in Japan and their previous Japanese teacher had to go back to Japan so I took the responsibility. Now this brings me back to the speech that was coerced into giving.

I said that it was always better to be apart of the solution even if you can only offer a little. I do believe that but I see no “solution” for these problems. In the case of Maligaya House, there will always be irresponsible guys that will walk away from their responsibilities, that's a given, so it would appear that our role is just damage control for the ladies and the children. However, I can see a future where Maligaya House will not be necessary and that will be when the Japanese government begins to rule family court cases unbiasedly and not arbitrarily protect the Japanese. It's not just Filipinos that have a problem. Americans, Europeans, and Koreans have all petitioned the Japanese family court for custody of their child or other requests and the Japanese court is notorious for siding with the Japanese regardless of the circumstances. For Visayan Forum, I don't see an end to human trafficking in my life time and they will probably be stuck to operating mainly as relief to the victims which is definitely important but it is hard to make progress in prevention. The best path to a better situation I think is raising awareness and educating those who could be tempted by the recruiters and also the Philippine government doing more to guarantee its citizen's well-being.

I do see the gravity of these problems and issues but I am not convinced that my involvement will have a significant impact. That's not a reason to quit however but just a more realistic way to analyze the situation because I get frustrated with idealistic people that seem annoyed that human trafficking still exists even though they spent 2 months here working to eradicate it. Ideals are not entirely bad and I respect some idealistic figures in history that helped make the world a better place. But I have little patience for the superficial idealism that is so rampant on college campuses. So where do I find motivation to get up in the morning and work hard for no tangible benefit in return? I feel like there is an element inside of me that just doesn't take my life seriously. It's like I gave up on life a long time ago and so at this point it makes sense to offer myself in terms of serving other people. Some people might think this is depressing but I disagree. I feel liberated from any preconceived ambitions and now able to live my life the way I want and I see no reason to justify myself to anyone. I am happy here so I don't see any reason to have anxiety about the future. I follow my heart to wherever it leads and if that is working to get rid of landmines in Vietnam or fighting for the rights of transsexuals in Thailand then that's OK with me.