A Filipino social worker shares his efforts to deliver aid and support expats in lockdown

English transcript | نسخة عربية

Nationality: Filipino 
Occupation: System Administrator
Date of interview: 04 June 2020
Language of interview: English

Pedro was an assistant professor of computer science and taught at a university in the Philippines before coming to Kuwait 12 years ago to work as a systems administrator. Over the last few years though, his core work has shifted, and he is now a full-time social worker. He also volunteers for a local migrant rights organization. He is talking from outside a warehouse as they complete a food drive with other charities and prepare boxes to deliver to workers who have no jobs or income. The organization he volunteers with has coordinated with different migrant community groups to deliver aid. He and other volunteers with day jobs are now working 12 hours after their working days and averaging 3-4 hours of sleep a night. This is because they must prepare and deliver all of the aid in limited time frames to different areas across Kuwait. Boxes need to be adapted for families with infants, or communities’ differing staple diets. Due to lockdown restrictions, the aid workers try to coordinate with the police to arrange food delivery into restricted areas and to the amnesty centers where workers wait to be sent home. The authorities have largely been helpful with permits and assistance because the aid group is wearing full PPEs, delivering door to door, and does not create security or health threats. Sometimes though, there are just too many checkpoints and some police will not allow them to pass, so they just try again at the next opportunity. They have to be so careful with the health of their volunteers---they have maintained a small team in order to minimize risk of any of them contracting the virus. One of the aid recipients was in a household where two family members died of COVID, so the volunteers adapted their PPEs, doubling them and wearing face shields when delivering the food. So far they have served over 12,000 people. The project consists of 28 volunteers. 

In addition to food aid, the group has been providing other forms of support. There are a lot of couples who delivered their babies and then couldn’t go see them in the hospital. The project has tried to help those couples get in to see their newborns and provide transport. But the greatest challenge has been to get psychological services to those with COVID. At the time of our conversation, there were an average of eight suicides every day, and Pedro and his team didn’t have access to counseling professionals that could assist them in seeing people through this period. Pedro reflects on the fact that migrant workers are meant to be the strong ones, the providers for their families - but now, they are barely able to afford food for themselves, and the pressure they feel can become unbearable. If they catch COVID, it can put them over the edge. 

“So, you know, like the, the tree, there's a hardest type of tree, we call it nara. Nara is the, our national tree. And there is a, you know, even the storms, biggest disaster, it doesn't break up, but in some point, once it was break, being broken up, it broke up hard because it's very hard tree.  Compare it to bamboo, bamboo, whatever type of storm. It will never break up. It always sways because the bamboo has the, you know, resiliency of having support to each other. It's the same idea with this nara, Nara stands only one single, singular while bamboo is a group. So the same thing, the migrants is, you know, need support, especially mentally not only financially.” 

Pedro says nothing will return to exactly how it was - we will all need to adapt to a new normal. This applies to labor laws, to personal behaviour, to everything. We must all work together… what is my normal as someone from a specific background, he says, may not be normal for someone else. That means that all of us have to be included in determining how we move forward, to think of that path together and try to work between our different political, religious, and national identities. 

As soon as he is able, Pedro plans to go home to see his wife, his three sons and his daughter.  He says you must never forget to make time for yourself to be a husband, a father, and to dedicate time to your own family. It is only by taking care of your own life that you are then able to help others.

In the clip above, Pedro imagines the 'new normal' and life post-COVID, and stresses the need for new standards, particularly when it comes to the labor law.

اقرأ القصة باللغة العربية