Philippine Women on Queens Road

"A man is not where he lives, but where he loves."
--Latin proverb

Queens Road in Central Hong Kong on a Sunday afternoon.

It's the day off for thousands of Philippine domestic workers, a work force almost entirely made up of women, who are either required to or want to get out of the homes and apartments where they are full-time live-in help to Hong Kong's working families.

Occupying a tiny room, usually just off the kitchen, these women do everything from child and elder care to cleaning, grocery shopping to cooking, chaperoning kids to school to walking the family pet. They are an essential component of Hong Kong's busy lifestyle and are a standard fixture in almost every family home, especially those with young children. In fact, over several generations, these women have become so essential to Hong Kong's lifestyle that it would be hard to imagine the city coping without them!

They have one day off a week and seek out someplace to spend the day. They congregate with co-workers, friends, sometimes family, in Hong Kong's parks, on the sidewalks and overhead walkways, under overhangs and in public areas, spreading out their makeshift cardboard-box blankets and playing cards, eating lunch, celebrating birthdays, giving each other mani/pedis, and exchanging stories, good and bad, from their week.

The noise is cacophonous and unintelligible - they speak at lightning speed in their native Tagalog, an ancient and mysterious tongue spoken in the Philippines that has no resemblance to any Western language. Perhaps it's their way of reclaiming, at least one day a week, their national identity; a subtle but strong statement that they still belong to someplace other than to Hong Kong and the homes where they work and reside. And for many, spending time with their sisters in Philippines' exported workforce is a weekly affirmation that even while they're raising Hong Kong's children, their lifeline is still firmly connected to their own children being raised by grandparents back in the Philippines.

I admit their masses can be daunting when trying to walk through Central Hong Kong on a Sunday afternoon. The noise is overwhelming and the crowds are much like Times Square in NYC during tourist season. Coming off of jetlag this weekend, it was almost enough to drive me back under the blankets for the afternoon! But it's very much a part of Hong Kong, a city we've grown to love and call home, and Sunday afternoon would not be the same without the chaos and cacophony of the Philippine women on Queens Road.