A Domestic Worker' Story - photo essay on love, loss, and displacement

 

Caroline’s daughter, Elodie with Juning’s second son, Roel, on the family farm in Bantayan Island/Credit: Caroline Irby

 

Award-winning photographer Caroline Irby grew up in London with Juning, a Filipina woman, who stayed with her family for 22 years, first in Hong Kong, then in London.  “I can’t say where Juning’s influence on my early years began and ended: she was in almost every part of my life.”  Caroline says that today no smell is more comforting than the smell of rice, which Juning loved to cook. And it is now her children’s staple.

But Juning had four children of her own living on her native Bantayan, a small island in the Philippines 7,000 miles away.  

It was only when Caroline became a mother herself that she grasped the price Juning and her children had to pay. “I can’t shake off a feeling of strangeness that their lives and mine carried on in parallel for all those years, mine with their mother, theirs without. We are all part of the same curious equation, and after decades of living in tandem but remotely, I wanted to try to understand how this all happened and what the effect on the people involved had been.”

 

Juning’s four children left behind

The result is “Someone Else’s Mother”, a beautiful and sensitive photo essay, interweaving Caroline's own recollections of a childhood spent with Juning with conversations and photos with Juning and her four children – gleaned in London and over three visits to Bantayan.

I found the book particularly interesting and moving because, although it tells the very personal story of Caroline and Juning and their families, it also echoes parts of the stories of millions of nannies and their host families across the world.

Every day, just from the Philippines, 5,000 people leave their country in search of work abroad. For decades, this movement has been female dominated: more than 70% of Filipino emigrants are currently women.

 

When she became a mother, Caroline decided to look after her children herself as much as possible, aware that is a freedom of choice Juning couldn’t have.

Juning explained: “I was desperate to earn more money. My children were still young and I left them with my mother. It hurt me when I left them, but I had no choice: I had to work abroad for their education.”

And Roly, Juning’s oldest child, told Caroline when she visited Bantayan in 2018 with her own children:  “I was lonely. Everywhere I was looking for her care. You were lucky, Caroline: you had her care for so many years. I had no one to talk to when I had a problem.”

Juning achieved her goal of feeding and educating her family: three of them have university degrees. Between them, there is a farm, several other homes, nine children, two foster children, and the extended family is well supported. “Quietly, Juning has been a vessel for a huge amount of change.”

Yet, “Someone Else’s Mother” is a bittersweet story with no happy ending. The thoughtful texts and light-infused photography weave together a story of  attachment, loneliness and displacement, love and loss, memory, sadness and hope, guilt and inequality. It is also a story to try to understand.  

And nannies and domestic workers all over the world will recognize parts of that story.

The book, published by Schilt in 2020, can be ordered online and from bookstores (and here).

Juning’s grown up children with Caroline’s children on Batayan Island/Credit: Caroline Irby

Gina Lopez, maverick environment activist fights Philippines’ mining

Courtesy of Gina Lopez

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I felt so energized and inspired after interviewing Gina Lopez, the Philippines’ former environment minister, for this issue of New Internationalist.

She is both a philanthropist and an environmentalist - a fiery, fearless, maverick activist who is not afraid of fighting the Philippines' powerful mining industry.  She believes that protecting the environment and promoting social justice go hand in hand.

She is irreverent, funny, full of energy and always in action – rolling her sleeves, campaigning, cleaning slums, jumping into a river to make a point, climbing a rock – and giving ministers and industrialists a piece of her mind.

"Yes, mining creates a few jobs and perhaps a few schools, and a few people enrich themselves, but thousands suffer and water sources are polluted for generations afterward.  Mining is just greed and selfishness."

As a minister, she banned open-pit mines and moved to shut down more than half of the operations of the country’s mining companies, after audits showed massive violations against the environment and the law. It cost her her job.

She is not your typical environmental activist. The daughter of one of the country’s wealthiest families, she fled the Philippines in 1972 to avoid political persecution during the Marcos regime, but returned in 1986 after being educated in the US, becoming a yoga master, and then working with disadvantaged communities in Africa. She still meditates every day.

She uses her connections as a shield in a country that is one of the world most dangerous places to be an environmental activist. “My family owns the biggest media company, I don’t think someone would want to harm me. I am not afraid of anything,” she told me matter-of-factly.

“What is needed is not a shift in economic priorities - but a greater realization and awareness of the damage some economic activities (mining, logging, rampant quarrying) inflict not only on our economic potential, but on our well being as a people. What is needed is a total economic valuation (monetizing the costs, the benefits) of these activities and then asking the very pertinent question - is it worth it?"

Last year, she received the Seacology Prize, awarded to those showing exceptional achievement in preserving island environments and culture.

You can read my story in New Internationalist here.