OFW HOUSEMATES

By: Abdullah R. Sirad


“I could have thrown up my hands and said, I am quitting! But I didn't”.

That was how my friend confessed to me when one time we were talking about homesickness. It was his first time to work away from home and at his fifth month in the company, he had encountered difficulty in adjusting to his colleagues and to the work environment. Much to longing family at home is the adversity he had facing toward his colleagues specifically to his housemates. Behavioral differences annoyed him in most of the time.

Although most of the OFWs have the freewill to choose whether they will stay with the company’s provided accommodation or to rent an apartment for their privacy, most of them chose to live with the company’s accommodation for the reason that it helps them reduce cost. But sometime, when the provided accommodation is very far from the work site or the accommodation itself is very uncomfortable, OFWs gambled to rent an apartment near to the work site. The problem is, most company doesn’t reimburse for the house rent. To save from rent cost, OFWs group themselves with at least 8 members, good enough to occupy two master bedrooms with two bath tubs/toilet and a spacious kitchen. Choosing to live privately requires more patients to challenges considering that individual differences usually ignite clashes among them.

Living with colleagues in one accommodation is truly a headache. We had seen clashes of people living together at Big Brother’s House but it’s greatly different from what I am referring – the OFW Housemates. In Big Brother House, there’s a rules followed and Kuya is there to moderate any clashes among housemates. Guidance counseling is also there available to help housemates who are in behavioral distress. But to OFWs, they don’t have rules to follow (most of the group members don’t follow to agreed particular rules) and no one is there to moderate clashes or to counsel housemates facing emotional crisis.

Being merged with different people always creates problems. You cannot really expect that your housemates would respect your principles or even your privacy. Because of individual differences, conflicts are always expected to arise. Criticism or shall I say destructive criticism is a prevalent causes of misunderstanding among housemates. Like when someone from the group talks about and aggravate the shortcomings of others. Or when someone is criticized of his being inconsiderate of loudly listening to music or when someone invited his friends and chitchat overnight disturbing others from sleeping. He may not intend to hurt or disturb other people but since the issue is a bit aggravated, it then caused misapprehension. Teasing is also very common among housemates. Since there’s no other way of diverting boredoms, unlike in Philippine where you can hang up with both male and female friends after office hour, housemates would tend to tease to enlighten themselves from stress. However, teasing sometimes becomes hurtful like when it delves on a personal or private life already while other seems to seriously rides on it until fights ignited. Bullying is another inevitable cause of conflict among housemates. There are those who are dominant in nature and whose principles always want to be respected or followed. They seem to impose what they want to happen without considering others’ opinion. Such makes others’ feel being discriminated which eventually leads into resentment. Unfair anger also wrecks relationship among housemates. Others are very emotionally sensitive in which they cannot control their temper whenever an argumentation arise. An example is when others from the housemates questioned the whereabouts or breakdowns of the budget. They would confront straightforwardly of how it was spent up to the single centavo. Usually it outraged people involved and resulted to a physical hostility especially when the accused cannot argue.

How do OFW Housemates survive in their dreadful relationship?

Worst as it is, they have no choice but to live with the situation. Bearing this kind of bitter relationship is indispensable to succeed in their mission abroad. They have to focus on doing what lies behind expecting that it may lead them to the next step and eventually to find themselves of where they want to be in spite of frequent communication gaps that overshadows their relationships.

This is because they cannot dictate one another to observe consideration and to listen with others grievances. They have to live practically, accepting the fact that the “strongest survives”. Otherwise, they have to voluntarily evict themselves from the house.