Migrants

The tragedy of Joanna Demafelis may have given some Filipinos second thoughts about working overseas. The possibility of ending up dead in a freezer, however, will continue to be overshadowed by the success stories, and there are many.

Last Saturday night I met Josephine Realisan, one of about five Philippine-born volunteers for Operation Restore Hope – not the US-led military intervention during the civil war in Somalia, but the multinational charity that provides free corrective surgery for poor children with birth defects and deformities, especially cleft lip and palate.

Josephine, now 56, has been joining Operation Restore Hope for 20 years now since it was launched in the Philippines. She is a nurse at the cardio-thoracic surgery section of the Great Ormond Street Hospital for children in London.

This year’s weeklong mission will start today at the Ospital ng Parañaque. The volunteer team of about 20 medical professionals includes surgeons, anesthesiologists, dentists and nurses.

Ambassadors Gordon Kricke of Germany and David Strachan of New Zealand, whose governments are supporting the mission, hosted a reception for the team the other night at the German embassy residence in Makati.

Josephine was in her sophomore year in chemical engineering at St. Louis University in Baguio when she heard that an American nun in the city’s renowned Good Shepherd Convent was looking for Filipinos, preferably indigenous people in the Cordilleras, who wanted to work as nurses in Australia.

Among the requirements was the completion of pre-nursing subjects. Though Josephine’s parents were from Bicol and she did not belong to an indigenous tribe, her college subjects met the pre-nursing requirements.

The Good Shepherd’s Mother Divine Child Flood (yes, that was the nun’s name) was rumored to be either a sister of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Or else her brother worked for MacArthur, and Filipinos had helped her brother during the war, so Sister Divine Child decided to serve in the Philippines.

Whether or not the rumors were true, the Australian program took in 101 students. The first batch finished the three-year hospital-based training at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney in 1976.

Josephine underwent a year of training under Sister Divine, who taught the nursing aspirants in Baguio about Australian culture and what to expect when they settle in that country. In July 1981, Josephine left for Sydney.

All 101 nurses, Josephine told me, now have families in different places in Australia. They set up the Sydney-based Mountain Maids of Australia, now renamed the Mountain Maid Families of Australia.

In 2000, Josephine moved to London and fell in love with an English-Serbian. Unfortunately, she was widowed five years ago.

In the past two decades, Operation Restore Hope has helped some 2,000 children in the Philippines. The nonprofit NGO, based in Australia, Germany and New Zealand, was founded by renowned cosmetic surgeon Darryl Hodgkinson. This year’s team includes volunteers from Dubai.

Beneficiaries of the surgery are screened by the Alay sa Kinabukasan (ASK) Foundation Inc. headed by former model and movie producer Via Marquez Hoffmann, who now lives in Australia with her German husband Ulrich. Via is the sister of former Parañaque mayor Joey and 1979 Miss International Melanie Marquez.

Josephine told me she would have liked to work in the Philippines, but being an Australian-British passport holder, this is complicated. So she takes time off every year to join Operation Restore Hope. Her volunteer work, she says, is “my way of giving back to my own people.”

*      *      *

In freezing Hokkaido during my recent visit to Japan, I met Michael Crisostomo, who is teaching English in several grade schools in Furano. Michael, 35, is one of four assistant language teachers in the city and the only Filipino.

He had been teaching high school science for 10 years at the Trinity Christian School in Bacolod when he got a scholarship from the Japanese government. Michael studied basic Nihongo. He told me he was fascinated by Japanese culture, and was particularly entranced by the tea ceremony and calligraphy. “I wanted new challenges,” Michael told me. “I wanted to join an international group.”

Through the Philippine chapter of the American Field Service, he applied to be an assistant language teacher under the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program.

In 2016, Michael became one of 4,952 participants from 40 countries to teach in Japan under the JET program. It has had 65,000 participants from 65 countries since it was launched in 1987. Contracts are renewed annually.

Michael’s widowed mother, distressed over the departure of the eldest of her two children, continues to get in touch with him regularly, even telling him what to do to bring down a fever.

The loneliness of being away from home can be intensified by the forbidding beauty of the endless expanses of snow in Hokkaido – an island popular for winter sports and, during spring and summer, vast tracts of lavender.

Japan is expanding the JET Program and will also be welcoming more nurses and caregivers from the Philippines as bilateral ties continue to grow stronger. Michael has two pieces of advice for those hoping to work in Japan: learn the language, and embrace the culture.

*      *      *

The stories of Josephine and Michael are inspiring, although I must confess that I hesitated to write about them, for fear that we could lose more health professionals and educators.

Like many Filipinos, I myself have relatives who left for the United States in the 1960s and 1970s and started their families there. One of them, a nurse who is now retired, has no plans of returning here. Others return occasionally for visits, usually to attend the funeral of a close relative. They became US citizens a long time ago and have businesses and properties there, and as far as I know, they have no intention of returning for good to their native land. I have cousins I haven’t seen for ages, and nieces and nephews I have never met.

We’re happy for them, and we’re grateful to the countries that gave them opportunities for a better life. And we’re additionally glad that some of them think of giving back to their native land.

But we have to intensify efforts to keep our people from leaving. When younger generations of Filipinos dare to dream, the backdrop of success should be their own land.