Free To Go - July 3, 2011

 

A sand fog blurs the outlines of the eclectic skyscrapers sprouting in clusters along the Gulf.  For 3 days the dust has huffed & puffed & powdered us even as we put the final load of luggage in the Tahoe and left our house for the hotel where we will spend our last week in Kuwait.  Since the official orders for our move came, the flurry of preparations intensified.  Thanks to an amazing support group here, most of the details that usually are so stressful were arranged with minimal effort on our part.  However, the one thing I most wanted to complete before leaving Kuwait was out of my control: I wanted Cristy to have the fraudulent charges against her dropped and for her to be sent home to the Philippines.

For over a year, Cristy has been detained at the Philippine Embassy shelter due to a charge by her employer that she stole her dog (difficult since she lived with the employer!) Cristy even served 4 torturous months in jail for this alleged crime she never committed. While at the shelter, Cristy became my key contact and lead teacher for Trash To Treasure.  She was always there with a smile to manage the resources I brought, to teach new runaways how to make beautiful rugs, & to translate their needs to me when their English was lacking.  Even after a year of living shoulder to shoulder with 300+ women in a rat & bug infested shelter, she NEVER complained.  (Trash to Treasure is now providing monthly pest control to treat the infestation; the inspector nearly cried when he saw how bad it was!)  Through Trash To Treasure she was able to earn a few hundred dollars, which she sent home to provide for her daughter. With the amnesty in progress, we thought at one point she would be released, then she learned that because she had no passport (her employers kept it) she would have to go through the detention center and leave as an undocumented prisoner...hadn't she been humiliated enough already???

In the last month, the labor attaché was discharged from his post under allegations of human trafficking and he was replaced by David. I have a growing and trusting relationship with David who has quickly implemented many changes to improve the care and protection of his workers.  He welcomed the support of Trash To Treasure and made himself available to us on any issues.  During my last meeting with him, I shamelessly asked for one parting favor: the release of Cristy so she could go home, spend summer with her daughter, then go to Singapore to work for my friends who are starting a 3 year assignment there in August. I told him I couldn't bear to go without knowing she was also free to go and resume her life.  He immediately called Cristy in so he could hear her details and promised me he would get to work on her case.

As the movers were packing up the last of our possessions, I got a call from David to tell me Cristy had her airline ticket for the NEXT day! He'd gotten the legal case erased, produced travel documents and she would fly as a free woman, not as a prisoner! I wept with joy then, and when I went to the shelter to say goodbye. For both of us now, we were free to go!

Now part of me wants to race to the departure lounge at the airport and part of me wants to stay and start a rescue operation for the maids who are still trapped by fear and abusive employers. The paper today had a front page story of two maids who tied sheets together and escaped from a 3rd story window of the home where they worked and took a taxi to the embassy shelter where I worked.  They were discovered missing and 5 of the men in that family raced to the shelter to try to get the girls back.  They assaulted the guard at the gate and battered the fleeing housemaids who were just arriving. They felt they owned the women and were incensed that they would dare to leave their clutches even though they had not been paid for months and had been forced to work 20 hour days. The women are now safe and charges have been pressed. Once again, we wait for the slow turning wheels of justice and pray the healing of these women will begin.

I'm thrilled that Cristy is free and with her little girl, delighted to know she will have a great job this time that will allow her to provide for her daughter. I'm racked with grief that the broken system continues to suck in and chew up women from poor countries who have no other hope for generating income short of prostitution. I'm feeling guilty that I'm so happy to be leaving when there is still so much more I could do. I must learn to live with this tension and the knowledge of the "other side" and pray for grace to remember them well when I no longer see them beating rugs on the balconies and washing dusty cars in the heat of the desert sun.