I WAS literally in the closet! Bawling all night in a dark corner of my clothes closet, while listening to Joey Albert moan some familiar ballad. I missed home. I was so homesick that I would purchase phone cards, scratch the code and dial home. Sometimes, the connection was bad, but I kept scratching those cards, just to hear my Mom on the other end of that line. Sometimes, I was too tired I would fall asleep, but my Mom would keep talking while I was snoring. Thankfully, the homesickness eased up after the first six months.
My cousin from a neighboring city sent me a care box that helped me survive. She gave me a winter jacket, a sleeping bag, and a used rice cooker. Finally, some rice! She even helped me buy a used car. Having a car was a huge help for all of us, especially in buying our groceries, mailing letters to our loved ones, and meeting other Filipinos.
There were several issues that my Filipino co-workers and I faced on a regular basis:
Sexual Harassment: As a young man from the tropics working in a rough part of town, I was sexually harassed by some co-workers from both genders, mostly at work. As always, I learned to survive. I learned not to become the prey.
Bullying: We had a staff meeting one afternoon at work, for some complaints that we, Filipinos, were not doing our job. We were working as nurse aids at that time. During the meeting, bags after bags of dirty diapers were placed in front of us. What was more painful was, those bags were carried by some of our co-workers who we thought were our friends. So, we scrubbed clean those diapers with poop all afternoon. As always, we endured.
Racism: I finished my eight-hour shift one afternoon. As I was strutting away towards the exit door of the facility, my employer, wearing his usual Stetson boots and cowboy hat, called me back and told me I couldn’t go home and instead needed to work additional hours. He further threatened that I could not refuse, or else he would send me back on a banana boat to where I came from. I knew it was time to move on and find another employer.
Dealing with those issues made me realize that I needed to quickly take and pass my licensure exam. Without taking any reviews, I scheduled my licensure exam sooner than everyone else. My desperation made me focus on passing that exam. After passing and obtaining my formal license to practice as registered nurse (RN) from the State, I went and presented these documents to my employer, who informed me that they did not have a RN position to offer. I fought back. I showed them our signed contract that we presented at the US embassy, stating that we were entitled to a RN position after obtaining our license. They caved in and offered me the treatment nurse position.
That was an interesting job. Aside from dressing oozing wounds that had become tunneled, I was also cleaning prosthetic eyes, which required martial arts skills to remove from patients.
My desire to find a new employer made me open an old notebook where I wrote the phone numbers of family and friends who migrated to the US. I searched for those that migrated in Texas and started dialing them. The first person I dialed was a childhood friend from church, who had migrated to the US when we were teenagers. I have not seen him since. When I dialed his number and learned who was calling, he quickly said to stay put, as he was coming over. In about 30 minutes, he was knocking on my apartment door and told me to pack my bags because I was coming with him. There was my old friend- a little taller, a little wider, yet the same sense of compassion I remember him having. The following morning, he took me to the human resource office of the hospital he was working. They hired me immediately.