The OFW Menace

Who says being an OFW is a blessing? On a glimpse, yes, it is, but every OFW understands that it carries with it a very heavy curse because of the many sacrifices and trials every OFW must have to overcome.

Any success one gain from working abroad, cannot compensate for the years missed being with the family, especially with the children whom you left when they were a few months old, or can barely walk when you left.

The warmth of love of being together as family was completely sacrificed.

What material things can replace the smiles, and hugs of children? What material things can replace the hugs and soothing rub of parents to their children when they’re afraid of lightning and thunders, or hurt from exploring new things? Nothing!

I know this from experience.

While it is true that you will be off better financially, you do not know how much love and affection your children lost from you as their father, from you as their mother or both from you as their parents when you were away. In addition, they lost the opportunity to learn from parents how to travel this life when their time comes to leave and live at their own. And vice-versa. How much smiles from kids each parents missed while being away? If their smiles in the internet cam makes a parent’s heart jumps with joy, then how much more if one is cradling the child?

How much opportunity you missed to teach them wisdom they need to learn to make them mature and responsible person while they grow up? You can’t reprimand them when you only have once in a while opportunity to speak on facebook, skype, or google+, or Ymessenger if their mother said about their mischiefs.

Because of this abroad syndrome, the strong sense of family closeness is now fading. Many children are now living like orphans of live parents. When these kids marry, they have no sense of how to become parents because they didn’t have “parents” during their kiddy times they could emulate. (I experienced this with my parents who grew up without parents – they were kind of learning how to handle us as when we were growing up)

I see people whose wife or husband is working abroad. They were young a decade ago or two ago, but now they have aged and I cannot imagine, where is the happiness of being married when they have been living separately most of their lives – if one call that a married life. These people are lying to their face if they say they’re living happily away from each other.

Okay, they built big houses, bought cars, lands, and complete material things as the number one investments of many OFWs, but what’s the use of having all those things when you cannot enjoy them because you’re still busy working to earn more money because there’s not enough saved for the future. One of my employers used to say, “Most people are working so hard as if they’re going to live forever!”

Many times, it’s already too late when they come home. I have seen many of these OFWs had arrived home very sick, disabled, and cold dead. What hurts the most is when one did not enjoy the warmth of love, parents and children were longing for when they were away from each other.



You may also like to read My Experiences as an OFW

When you ask OFWs why they are going abroad or staying away for so long, the foremost reason given is they are working for the future of their children. Yes, they’re sacrificing because of their love to their children. Love - or the ambition to get all the material things every human being desired to have in this world? Because if it is true that the ultimate reason is “Love for the children,” how come many if not most OFW families are broken? Why can’t the husband and wife stay together as one family for the sake of their children? Why can’t they forgive each other’s shortcomings – for the sake of the children? Poor children – they’re being used by their parents as escape goats for their selfishness. How many OFW parents applied for annulment of their marriage for the sake of themselves but did not think about the sake of their children?

Many children are wandering for they have no goals in life because they have no parents to guide and show them examples how to live life even without wealth. Then at the end when they failed on their studies and became menace to the society, they end up taking all the blames because they did not value the sacrifices of their parents - and did not listen to the teachings of their teachers!

When the kids are lucky enough to finish their college and got a degree, most of them end up working as OFWs because there were not enough jobs in their own country or the degree they finished is a low paying job. How many of those kids I saw were helped by their parents to go abroad after spending so much money in school? I said they’re the next generation or cycle of OFWs. When they get old and lucky enough to have family and children, the children will replace them, too, in after more than two decades, and the cycle continues – until nothing is done to stop the cycle.
My ten years of being an OFW made me understood, that OFW as a means to improve one’s financial status is a big blunder. It’s a menace to the family as a foundation of strong society.

A menace that must be addressed now to avoid the inevitable collapsed of a nation.

You may also like to read Cheapear Places to Remit In the Philippines