(Published in ENRICH magazine, 2021)
ABOUT THIS TIME some 30 years ago, I was one among tens of thousands of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) thankful for the God-given chance to earn U.S. dollars every month as employees of companies based in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), better known to Filipinos as Saipan.
My Saipan stint was my initiation into the world of the OFW. It taught me firsthand how tough overseas work is mentally and emotionally. I also learned it wasn’t the solution to my financial problems.
It's nostalgic and sad looking back across the decades. Reading my notes makes me want to build a time machine so I can go back to the 20th century -- a more predictable and less confusing time than today.
***
HAMBURGER ISLAND. Lunch was a Filipino fast food feast: hamburgers, breaded fried chicken, “pansit palabok,” French fries and Coke in small plastic cups. The six of us to be interviewed for the job vacancies commandeered a long table at a burger place in Makati.
Halfway through the meal, one of the men spread a small-scale map of the Asia Pacific in front of us. He couldn’t find Saipan on the map, he said. An older man stubbed his finger on a spot off the northwest coast of Hawaii, which is where he proclaimed Saipan jto be, but which looked to me like the position of Midway Island.
I took a piece of burger and planted it on the Pacific Ocean due east of Luzon Island. “Saipan,” I said.
“Looks like hamburger to me,” said an older man.
He let out a guffaw. The others laughed, too. Welcome to Saipan.
***
MAKE MINE MARVEL. Garapan, the largest town on Saipan, is a flat, lazy place that only came to life on weekends when legions of Filipino, Chinese and South Korean workers hit its streets.
Our barracks (which is what they call lodgings for overseas contract workers) was a dump. The roof was painted with rust. Corroding nail heads stained the warped walls. We later found to our sorrow the roof leaked when it rained, which was often on this rock.
The older one and I shared a room. Separating us was a long, massive closet that, to my later dismay, couldn’t muffle his maddening snoring. I had a hard wooden bed topped by a thin foam mattress.
Our employer said you couldn’t drink the tap water anywhere on the island. You’d have to buy drinking water at 50 cents a gallon. And don’t forget to zip your mouth when you shower or you might get diarrhea.
Our office was our employer’s home. His family lived on the first floor; we worked on the second to build his advertising business. The computers were all Apple Macs. One was a charming SE with the teeny weenie monitor that was a museum piece back home.
A lot of the flora here was familiar: hibiscus, bougainvillea, coconut trees, bananas, and bamboo. I took a few rocks and pitched a la Nolan Ryan at a coconut tree a few feet away.
There should be baseball on this island. And Marvel Comics. This mote is, after all, U.S. territory. To my surprise, there was no Marvel Comics on the island and no baseball, either.
***
THE INVADERS. There were more Filipinos than locals in the entire CNMI. Apart from Saipan, CNMI consists of the small islands of Tinian (about 104 square kilometers in size) and Rota (85km2). Saipan is 119 km2 in area and is the commonwealth's center of everything. CNMI is a territory of the United States so Filipino babies born here automatically become American citizens.
There were about 25,000 of us Filipinos to 20,000 of them. By "them" I mean the Chamorros and the Carolinians, which are the two main ethnic groups on Saipan. We learned you can tell a Chamorro from a Carolinian (who hail from the Caroline Islands to the southeast of Saipan) by their skin color. Carolinians are lighter skinned. Chamorros, however, comprise most of the indigenous population on Saipan.
Like Filipinos, Chamorros are mostly Roman Catholic and have English as their key language. There were, however, more Filipinos on Saipan than Chamorros when I was there.
Chamorros and Carolinians ran the government and were paid better. We were stuck with private employment and paid less.
Many Filipinos have scare stories about the "locals" as we called them. It was well known that most local employers never went to college. Some were beasts to their Filipino employees. Almost all of them chewed betel nut by the ton.
Filipinos everywhere. It was as if you never left home. And there weren’t that many whites, to my surprise. But there were hordes of Japanese tourists who either soaked up the sun at Saipan’s splendid beaches or paid homage to their war dead at Suicide Cliff.
Once, at a seaside picnic with a few Filipinos, I jokingly said the Philippines should invade this place and make it a province. It’s basically Filipino in numbers anyway.
Saipan’s only defense is its paltry police force and a few CIA spies hunkered down in a hush-hush listening post atop a heavily guarded hill. We’d win easy with the battle hardened Philippine Army, I told them.
Why should we want to do that, asked one of the guys. That would mean we’d be getting our pay in Philippine pesos instead of U.S. dollars.
The rest concurred. Case closed.
***
MAMMON. It’s a 10-minute walk to the mom and pop grocery nearest our barracks. Three local women run the store. Prices of many of the groceries I buy are cheaper here than those at a lot of the Filipino-run stores in Garapan.
Korean stores sell the cheapest, but I’d have to take the bus and pay two dollars roundtrip to get to the nearest one. Two dollars is still two dollars.
I was standing in line at a mom and pop one run by locals one Saturday morning. A brawny Filipino ahead of me was counting his change.
“You short 10 cents,” he told the cashier in English.
“I am not!” the young woman cashier shot back.
The Filipino laid his change on the table and showed her his receipt.
“You short 10 cents,” he said again.
“You musta slipped it in your pocket!” she yelled. “Now get out!”
“You short 10 cents,” repeated the Filipino.
“Call the cops, momma!” shouted the cashier.
She screamed at the top of her voice. He screamed at her in Filipino while those of us in the queue watched in amazement and horror. They kept going at each other until two cops arrived.
One cop shouted: "What the hell's going on?"
The cashier shouted her side of the story. The Filipino, fumbling with his English, mumbled his version. He stared at the floor to avoid eye contact with the huge cop -- a local -- who was glaring at him.
The other cop quietly went up to the cash register, one of those old, pull lever types that rested on four legs, and started looking around.
The cop swept his fingers under the register, and out came 25 cents, 10 cents, another 10 cents, more 25 cents and a lot of loose change.
“Hey, look at this,” the cop called out to his buddy.
The big cop took a hard look at the loose change. He took 10 cents from the counter and shoved it into the pants pocket of the Filipino and told him to go home.
Ten U.S. cents! That’s just three Philippine pesos! No Filipino in his right mind would risk jail time for three pesos. Three pesos can’t even buy you a bottle of Coke.
But this is dollar country and we’re talking U.S. dollars. That’s why this screaming Filipino and I were here. To earn almighty U.S. dollars.
There is but one god.
***
DECENT EXPOSURE. My boss and I had just come from a client meeting and were headed home. At the parking lot, I was startled by the sight of three young girls and a young boy playing volleyball on the beach, which was only short distance away from me.
The girls were wearing long skirts that extended below their knees but were naked from the waist up. Their long, black hair revealed their breasts as they jumped and yelled in delight as they hit the ball back and forth. I stared at them.
"Never seen naked girls in public before, Art?" asked my boss, who was from the island country of Palau to the southwest of Saipan.
"Is that legal?" I asked.
"They're Yapese from Yap island, which is close by," he said. "On Yap, it's indecent for women to show their knees but not their breasts."
I was dumbfounded; didn't know that.
"I know the guy," said my boss. "Come on. Let's say hello. Hey, Joseph," he yelled.
The young man turned towards us and waved.
"Uncle Pete!" he yelled back.
They high fived. The girls gathered round them and they began engaging in conversation. I watched the proceedings with interest.
"Hey, Art," my boss waved to me. "Come on over."
As I approached, one of the girls pointed excitedly at my direction. She turned to the others and said something.
"Raina tells us you look almost exactly like a friend of hers," said my boss, pointing to the girl who pointed at me.
I looked at Raina, a tall, slim lass with a kayumanggi complexion -- and bare breasted.
"You're one unlucky girl for knowing two ugly guys,” I said, smiling.
The girls burst out laughing.
"Yes, I am," she quickly replied.
Again loud laughter from the girls.
"Well, looks like you two are getting along fine," said my boss.
I looked at Raina and smiled. She smiled back.
***
LOVE BITES. One odd thing I noted on Saipan was the dearth of romances between Filipino men and local women. I never met a Pinoy guy who had a local for a girlfriend, which was surprising since I'd come across my fair share of really pretty Chamorritas and Carolinians.
My officemates and I were shopping at a Joeten grocery when we came across a couple of local teenage couples. The teen girls were pretty: one was clad in sheer nighties, which I'd seen some girls wear on the street as if they were day clothes. The other had on a skin tight tank top and really short shorts.
It wasn't their clothes that made me remember these girls, however. What struck and astonished me was that both of these girls had a red circle of bright red "hickeys" (kiss marks) around their necks.
"Don't stare, pre," said one of the guys with me who'd been here for more than a year.
He later explained girls displayed their kiss marks in public because it was a local custom. The love bites show these girls to be desirable, he said. This was the first but not the last time I saw "hickey necklaces" on young women, who proudly flaunted them as badges of honor.
I couldn't help thinking to myself: "What if we had this custom back home?"
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