Sunday Refugees

"The last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
--Viktor Frankl, Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist

Every Sunday, everywhere you look in Central Hong Kong, there are hundreds of Filipino women huddled on their cardboard mats, having lunch, playing cards, chatting with friends, laughing over the week's events and enjoying an afternoon of their own culture. They're literally everywhere, mostly camped out under overpasses to shelter them from the weather or pressed up against buildings, scraping up whatever shade they can. They're of every age and description, and there's nary a man among them. It's all women, all Filipino, all foreign domestic workers in the residences of Hong Kong.

Years ago, when we first saw them hunkered down in the streets of Central, we thought there must be a special event going on. A concert? A demonstration? A parade? But there were no police, no signs, no music, no bullhorns; everybody was walking among and around them, not the least bit phased by the "camps" set up on the streets and sidewalks of the city. It didn't take us long to discover that this was a weekly event, always occurring on Sundays, which has been going on for generations and is as much a part of Hong Kong as the harbor. The authorities have "moved" them into the pedestrian walkways and covered malls, freeing up Central's streets and roadways, but there's no "disbanding" them - this gathering of women has been a Sunday ritual for years and, no doubt, will continue for years to come.

The women are Hong Kong's foreign domestic workers, or "imported labor" as city officials call them. They've left their homes, their families and their own children in the Philippines and have come to work in Hong Kong where they take care of the children in other people's homes. Many of them come from a long line of women who have done the same, mothers and grandmothers before them, perhaps their own children following after. The irony, of course, is that to support their families back home, they've chosen to work in a foreign home, raising the children of another family, while their own children are raised without them in the Philippines by a grandmother or other relative. The cycle is vicious and threatens to be never ending.

Recent statistics say there are over 140,000 Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong; they work six days a week and have one day off, Sunday. Most of them attend church and then gather on the streets and sidewalks to socialize with each other. They send almost their entire monthly paycheck home, supporting the Filipino economy and their families, both of which rely heavily upon their income. Even those with higher educations often prefer to work as a domestic in Hong Kong, simply because it provides a better and more reliable paycheck.

Although Filipinos have a great command of English, they speak Tagalog among each other, a language which remains a complete mystery to most Westerners. Their voices can get so animated that the sound is deafening as you walk past, but their enthusiasm is not to be denied, they are clearly content to spend their Sundays on the streets together.

Because they can't be in their place of employment on Sundays, and spending the day at the malls or in the cafes is far too expensive, they flock to the streets where they socialize, picnic, play games and catch up on the news from home. Although I know they're having fun, I still can't help but think they're kind of "displaced;" so we listen to their laughter and their crazy language, we step over and around them on the sidewalks, we smile as we see them sharing their pictures and picnics, and we fondly refer to them as Hong Kong's Sunday Refugees.