How do OFWs cope with homesickness

Christmas can be the loneliest time of the year, when you’re an OFW, trying to cope with occasional bouts of homesickness. The eleven million Filipinos, who are in some 200 countries all over the world, are mostly separated physically from their spouses, children, parents, siblings and other family members and friends. This situation is pregnant with tremendous possibilities for depressions culminating into some serious mental and psychological problems.

The bad news is that there actual incidences of suicides and mental disorders secondary to homesickness. But the good news is, owing to the well-known resiliency of the Filipinos, the majority of our OFWs are not only surviving, they are also coping well. They find positive coping mechanisms that enhance their excellence as migrant workers. They are not only remitting between 23 to 25 billion US dollars a year, they are also enjoying themselves and are growing as better persons than they used to be.

And so the question is: How are our OFWs coping with homesickness and avoiding depressions? How are they avoiding serious mental, emotional and psychological problems? What are their coping mechanisms and techniques of surviving bouts of loneliness, homesickness and depressions. I have gathered a wealth of empirical data and anecdotal evidence for three years in Malaysia, two years in Kuwait and now almost a year in Taiwan. Based on these data, I can say that their coping mechanisms can be classified into two principal categories: Positive and Negative.

The Positive Coping Mechanisms include sports, social functions, religious activities, outreach programs for distressed migrant workers, capability-building projects and musical, artistic and cultural pursuits. The Negative Coping Mechanisms include vices - gambling, smoking, drinking; and, hold your breath, the ever popular sex - adulterous, illicit, homosexual, heterosexual and other forms of promiscuity.

In sports, the most popular is Basketball, followed by Bowling, Badminton, Golf and Shooting. Filipino migrants are regular partygoers. They love to dance and sing and eat and drink socially, while exchanging gossip and stories about love, career and business. They gather together to celebrate birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and fiestas, especially Christmas.

Religious activities include prayer meetings, Life In the Spirit Seminars, Marriage Encounters, Santa Cruzans, and festivals like the Sinulog, Ati-atihan, Peñafrancia, Moriones and the Seven Last Words as well as other Lenten activities. OFWs also undertake outreach programs like feeding of wards in the Filipino Resource Centers, hospital and jail visitations. They also help the Labor Attaché by acting as volunteer resource persons in the government’s Skills Training Program for OFWs.

We would rather not elucidate further on the negative coping mechanisms as we don’t like to stress the negative in this column. I will write that in another medium, like a book I am writing now. Suffice it to say that a lot of marriages have been broken and families shattered as a result of migration. But I can state here without fear of contradiction, that the large majority of our migrant workers are coping well and are doing the good, the righteous and the more respectable coping mechanism with which to combat homesickness. I am truly proud of them.

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