Magnetic Letters

I question my father’s absence when I was growing up. He left the Philippines to work as an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) in Saudi Arabia in 1988, and stayed there for 12 years. OFWs are Filipinos deployed as land or sea-based workers abroad.

As a kid, I remember writing letters and recording our voices on cassette audio tapes for my father. In these tapes, we would talk about our day and how we miss each other. My family lost our tapes, but I have been collecting these decades-old cassette tapes from other families.

I want to understand what motivated my father to leave us before. Is there really no choice but to be away from us? How did he feel? As I find answers, I learn about his history and the collective stories among migrant families.