Rolinda Espanola: A Mother’s Love
“To work abroad is the only decent act I know
To support your education and give a better tomorrow”
Asked in class to share about an object that best represents her, Rolinda took out a notebook in the shape of a frog.
“The child that I take care of gave this notebook to me. I bring it with me everywhere. It is my lucky frog,” she said, holding the book with a smile.
But Rolinda’s smile belies an ache — as a foreign domestic worker, she juggles between two lives, two loves. There is the love for the child in Singapore that she takes care of as part of her duties. There is also her own child that she had left behind in the Philippines when she migrated to Singapore to work four years ago.
For her photography project that Rolinda completed during a pilot programme conducted by Lensational volunteers Joel Lim and Yuen Sin in partnership with Aidha, a Singapore NGO that provides financial education for women, she documented the dual roles that she has as a foreign domestic worker in the city-state.
Every day, domestic workers from the Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia and other South-East Asian pick up Singaporean children from school when it ends at around 1 or 2pm as their parents are busy at work. Singapore places a high premium on education as a social leveller, with many seeing the public school system as a means of moving up in life.
This (left) is a domestic worker fetching a child after school. Can you see that they are holding on to her, for security?
These are domestic workers with the children thay they are picking up. She is giving food to the children — it’s Filipino food.
Rolinda’s own daughter started primary school in June 2016. With the money that she has saved up from working in Singapore, she, too, can afford to send her daughter to a good school in the Philippines, with the hopes of giving her a brighter future.
I just went to Lucky Plaza (a popular hangout for Filipino domestic workers) today. She is remitting money. As a mother — why do we work here? To send money home.
For the Migrant Worker Poetry Competition organised in 2015, Rolinda penned this poem for her daughter:
My Wish
I wish to see you blow the candles each year
To be a part of the crowd who sing and cheer
Wish to be on that stage every school end
To see those beaming smile when medals and ribbons pinned
I wish to give you bathe, dress up and tie your hair
To hold your hand and walk to school and be glad if you say it’s my mom standing there
I wish to hug you every time you come home crying
To make your milk and on the light if your dreamng
But more than that I wish to be a good mother
And the fact that I can’t be if I have to stay there
So here I am going far from you
And wish someday you’ll understand what did I do
To work abroad is the only decent act I know
To support your education and give a better tomorrow
Those are simple wishes that can easily be granted
But the reality I have to stay here though going home is what I wanted
Rolinda Espanola, 39, is from the Philippines. She had to leave her daughter, who has just started primary school in June 2016, behind to work in Singapore as a domestic worker. She has been working in Singapore for four years. She also writes poetry and was shortlisted for the Migrant Worker Poetry Competition 2015.
