Dear Mrs Arroyo: An open letter on our wacko maids

Thank you very much, Mrs Arroyo, for the heads up on all those loco maids the Philippines has been sending out all these years and for your newfound zeal to rid the world of them and your assurance that as long as presidential blood runs in your veins, you will never again let any luka-luka and baliw work for a God-fearing household in the First World.

Thank you, indeed, for making the world a safer place. Now, everyone can sleep soundly knowing that when they have a Filipino maid in their employ, they can work her to death without paying her a whiff, beat her to a pulp, molest her and basically strip her of her humanity and treat her worse than they would a stray dog, and she’d still come through the day singing, smiling and shouting, “Mabuhay, y’all!”

I mean, aren’t you, Mrs Arroyo, setting up a Committee for the Systematic Weeding Out of Wacko Maids? Man, you guys do not disappoint.

Can I just make one suggestion here? Why not take it to the next level? Maybe you can work out some kind of certification or classification of our maids and get this approved by the International Organisation of Standardisation. Then you’ll have something like – Super Inday: ISO 9000-certified.

Now, that’s quality assurance for you. I can almost hear it: Oh, look, hon, a Filipino maid. Let’s get one. This one has a seal of sanity on her.

Or, maybe we in the media are just not getting it right – as you and your spritely spokescreatures like to say, we’re probably just missing the context and blowing this thing out of proportion.

But I swear this guy from the foreign office, Esteban Conejos, has been clear in saying there is a need to make psychiatric testing mandatory for all domestic helpers leaving for jobs abroad. And he has some numbers to back him up. He says seven out of 10 Filipino maids on death row in the Middle East have had a history of mental illness. Man, seven wackos out of 10! Seventy freaking per cent!

I get it where Mr Conjeos is coming from. He believes he can get the numbers down by screening those thousands of maids leaving the Philippines each month and taking out the loonies before they get a chance to board a plane and things get really out of hand and they snap at the wrong place at the wrong time. He believes only the strong in mind and body gets to leave, so we’d stop getting all that shit about a Filipino maid slitting the throat of dirty ol’ Grampa who’s been raping her repeatedly for months.

Mr Conejos gets it. He feels our pain.

Here’s a guy, with the mental fortitude he thinks all maids must possess, who probably won’t mind being hit with a rolling pin on his head, back and calf every day and being kicked senseless while he sleeps on a dog bed.

Here’s a guy who’ll be perfectly all right feeding on three-day-old food, while the family dog gets chicken nuggets and fresh fruits. Heck, chain him to a kitchen sink or hit him with a water bottle on the mouth. Just mind over matter, right, Mr Conejos?

What’ll he do if he gets fed up? Why, the sane thing to do – and he is a sane man – is to just run off to the embassy and get a free ticket back home. Forget about filing a criminal or civil complaint. Forget about suing the motherfuckers. Forget about everything and just move on. Mind over matter.

So, hats off to you, Mr Conejos. You’re the dawg, man!

One thing I don’t get, though, is if we begin certifying our maids as 100 per cent sane, then what’ll happen to that uber-effective defence our embassies always use to get pardons for those on death row: that, oops, they just “lost it” when they did the deed?

But then, maybe it’s for the best.

So, come on guys, stop badgering the government with these things and advocacies that just get in the way of the little soirees and tete-a-tetes of its diplomatic missions. Setting up support services that will empower maids to fight for their rights? Now, that’s just asking too much.

Yours until Obama becomes president,

Pininggapura

PS –

Oh, our hats off to you, Mrs Arroyo and Mr Conejos, for the image boost you’ve given OFWs like me, Ares, Muloy and The Talented Mr ManF. Now, maybe my toxic boss will start going easy on me if I stop bathing and start murmuring something like “Crispin? Basilio?” while in the office. She may start thinking: Wait a minute, this may be a loco Filipino I have here. I’d better stay out of his way and leave him be. This guy may be capable of nasty things that’ll make Hannibal Lecter look like Bambie.