The Proud Ifugao

When she learned about the recent tragedy that hit her home country, Overseas Workers Welfare Administration Welfare Officer Mary Donoan-Dait closed her eyes and offered silent prayers for the families who lost their lives and their loved ones who remain missing.

Nerve-wracking and heartbreaking memories swirled back in her mind, as she recalled her own experience when Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption displaced hundreds of thousands of Filipinos from their homes. This happened, she said, during her 20-years of social work when she was still connected with the then Department of Social Welfare in her hometown in Ifugao, a Cordillera province in North Luzon, Philippines.

Along with hundreds of social workers in the Philippines, Dait was sent to help the people from Pampanga cope at evacuation centers and shelters.

She recalled that, when she reached the evacuation centers, her heart was crushed in an instant to see the collective grief and bereavement that could be seen etched in the faces of hundreds of families gathered at the center. Some were weeping. Some were just staring blankly, in deep torpor over what lies ahead in their lives.

Dait said it was her first time to see thousands of tents pitched on white sandy expanses—lahar that had turned solid. She said the area was a complete white tapestry—blank, unremitting, and cold.

She said it was her first time to sleep on sand. She remembered trembling when a sudden roar from afar would wake them all up in the middle of the night. That roar was the angry lahar flow that continued to devastate some homes in the area.

For months, she stayed at the evacuation center, trying to uplift the spirit and morale of the dislocated people. She recalled that people and children had nothing to do everyday but wait for the nature’s wrath to subside so they could all go back home—if there were still homes to go back to, she said.

She said she and other social workers preoccupied people’s minds with something productive so they wouldn’t brood. “Let’s improve our gardens here.” “Let’s plant some trees here.” The people would then occupy themselves with gardening and planting trees while their children also helped.

When everything seemed better in the centers, she prepared to head back to Ifugao and continued her other social work in the Cordillera province. As she was about to leave, the people pleaded with her not to leave them. “If not for you, we would not have survived,” some of them said. Her other responsibilities prevented her, however, from staying longer so she had to go. As a present, some of the evacuees gave her a piece of soap and a towel. She said tears just ran down her face.

“I was deeply touched,” Dait said, saying that these people have lost everything they had—their homes, their possessions, their land.

Until now, that soap and towel are displayed unused in her house in the Philippines to remind her of the people she had helped.

THE NURSE TURNED SOCIAL WORKER

Dait passed the grueling entrance exam for the prestigious University of the Philippines Diliman campus in Quezon City, the Philippines. She initially took up a nursing degree but ended up getting a bachelor’s degree in Social Work instead. She quipped, “I realized I was afraid of blood during laboratory work.”

In one of her school exposure trips to nursing homes and orphanage, it suddenly dawned on her that helping people would bring her more fulfillment as an individual. This prompted her to shift to another course that would provide her the skills and training to be effective in helping people.

When she graduated she immediately served her own hometown, working as a welfare assistant all the way up to being a social worker.

After 20 years of dedicated service to the department, she had another calling: to serve Filipinos who work outside the Philippines. She joined OWWA in 1994 as a consultant but in 1997 she became a welfare officer and had her first out-of-the-country deployment. She was assigned to Hong Kong.

Her responsibilities, though, were not limited to Hong Kong but also to Macau. She said every now and then she traveled to Macau to take care of the OFWs there. She served in Hong Kong for four and a half years.

She described her Hong Kong assignment as the hardest and most demanding work for any welfare officer. “[My peers] said that, if I passed Hong Kong, that’s the test,” she said.

She said when she left Hong Kong, there were more than 140,000 domestic helpers, not including Filipinos working as professionals.

Dait said she learned so many things during her deployment in Hong Kong. She had a better understanding and had a more open mind in dealing with the different problems of the Filipino overseas workers. “I learned to be more patient and be diplomatic with them.”

The biggest case she has had to handle in Hong Kong happened in 1999, when an African man murdered a Filipino domestic helper. Dait was sent to handle the case and she said she was moved when her compatriots praised her on the way she handled the case. “I was so overwhelmed,” she said, adding that she realized her importance to the Filipinos that time. She said the case was solved with the assistance of the Philippine government.

CONQUERING SAIPAN

From the bustling city of Hong Kong, overshadowed by towering high-rise buildings, and a short stint in Dubai, a booming city at that time, she was then assigned to the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands.

When she got out of the Saipan airport, she said she thought she had a mistake in boarding the plane. She repeatedly asked her husband if they had boarded the right plane. Then she realized it was indeed Saipan, her new home.

She said the island is totally different from the countries she had worked in, but after two to three months, she had adjusted and fallen totally in love with the simplicity of the island.

“Here, we work 24-seven,” she said, “extending assistance whenever it is urgently needed.”

THE PROUD IFUGAO

Dait is part of one of the oldest ethnic tribe and community in the Philippines, the Ifugaos. She said she is very proud of her roots because she owes her stature to the rich culture and her upbringing in her small town in Cordillera.

She said the Ifugao culture has become diluted due to modern influences but, although some practices are not evident now, the Ifugaos’ values and traditions remain intact.

To some Filipinos here in the CNMI who also have tribal roots, she said they must be proud of their roots and not shy away because of their ethnicity. “Don’t put yourselves down, always stand up and speak up. Be proud of our roots.”