ON A WING AND A PRAYER
By Dr. Tilak S. Fernando
Picture Credit: Daily News
It is evident that today
there is a burning urge for people in this country to abandon Sri Lanka and
seek greener pastures elsewhere. Three-four decades ago foreign travel was
mainly confined to students for further studies.
Despite constant
surveillance and intercepting boatloads of people bound for Australia lately,
many seem to become innocent victims of illegal human cargo swindlers still.
Those who were detected by authorities have ended up as 'prisoners' in illegal
immigration camps thus putting an end to their dreams, high expectations, and
delusions of grandeur.
Why do some fall prey to
these racketeers constantly after paying substantial amounts of their savings
or borrowed money? According to some, it’s due to personal, financial,
frustrations in working environments, political interference/intimidation, and
a few for education. But the majority of the 'working class' seems to be
misguided by some of their 'friends,' who have gone abroad and returned back
after short spells or even on holiday (while
pending their asylum cases to be heard), and giving a completely false
picture and conditions abroad.
There is a vast
difference between those migrant workers who are sent through ‘official
channels’ and 'illegal emigrants,' who are trying to hoodwink foreign
authorities. Today the immigration regulations are intensely complex and Border
Controls are exceedingly stringent where the word 'illegal immigration' has become the most reviled word in most
countries. Why go any further, in our own land we have read in the newspapers
to what extent our immigration and emigration authorities have become rigorous.
Legal emigrant workers
Leaving aside those
illegal categories for a moment, if one were to concentrate on the officially
sent migrant workers, particularly to the Middle Eastern countries, outcome of
certain cases has been alarming. People undertake jobs in other countries, however
menial or hard these may seem, with one intention of refining their future.
True, to a certain degree it has benefited financially in a majority of cases
with unforgettable mental and physical hardships compared to what they
experienced at home, but can such financial gains be equated to the damage it
does to family fabrics of unfortunate cases where couples have separated and
their children allowed to pick up the pieces of psychological jigsaws?
A few 'luxury' items they bring after sweating
their guts out by working abroad, and those holiday makers splashing converted
foreign exchange into multi-ratio Sri Lankan rupee figures, make credulous
people to view living abroad with tinted glasses only by converting foreign
earnings into rupees, oblivious to many other vital factors that affect one's
life abroad.
Some mothers leave their
infants with fervent hopes of bringing smiles and sunshine to the family, but
on the contrary, in certain cases, their smiles have transformed into
frustrations and tears only, due to various factors.
New environment
In general, it is
apparent that foreign employers, especially in the Middle Eastern countries, do
not leave any room for their domestic assistants to communicate with their
families at home, but confine them to the walls of their environment; the
moment a new immigrant worker enters the country representatives of the master seems
to take possession of the passport of the newcomer at the airport itself, thus
making them helpless at the threshold of their intended land of hope and glory.
This fact has lead to
unfounded misunderstandings and miseries at home where the wife and/or husband
had gone astray. We have seen and read in the news media how many females have
returned home after working for years overseas and harassed, without any wages
too, the worst being battered and nails stuck into their human flesh.
According to United
Nations Resolution on human rights there are stringent labour regulations to
protect rights of workers in every country, but the million dollar question
would be to what extent a human heart can be bound to a Rule Book in treating
other fellow beings?
The gospel truth is that
Sri Lankans in general, who have been brought up to work very languidly, do
indeed sweat out every minute abroad in any job to earn every single penny for
their living.
If the same energy, enthusiasm,
and dedication had been applied locally, this country would have been at the
zenith industrially and agriculturally and the need or the longing to seek
greener pastures would never have arisen!
Ironically for those who
have lead comfortable lives at home and burnt their boats to leave Sri Lanka at
the drop of a hat, it becomes too late when the penny begins to drop. Let's be
frank about it, however overtly one praises and boasts about one's new
environment outside their homeland, covertly the refracted feelings of subtle
depressions and 'emptiness' will always haunt one, whatever brave front one
attempts to put out by trying to console oneself with the material comforts
acquired temporarily.
In short, the very
feeling of being a second-class citizen in a foreign land can never be erased
from one's mind, however hard one tries to fight such feelings!
First experience
An airline passenger's
maiden experience and the associated fear and grief when leaving Sri Lanka for
good, or even as a student for a couple of years, will take over him when the
plane is about 36,000 kilometers up in God's land, and the only vision becomes
confined to a sea of white clouds underneath.
This is how I felt as an
adolescent, many years ago, when I took off from Ratmalana airport bound for
London.
It was during Air Ceylon
time, and the airport was an open space where kith and kin could stand back and
watch their dear ones being taken up into the sky.
The blank feeling one
gets while seated at a window seat and looking at 'your people' waving their hands and handkerchiefs to the aircraft,
while the 'big bird' takes an upward thrust gracefully is heart pounding,
because it is at that vital moment only the feeling of being 'lost'
hits any individual convincingly. Trans World Air Lines (TWA) and BOAC (British
Overseas Airways Corporation) were the most popular air lines operated on
international routes during Air Ceylon days. Attractive incentives by airlines
those days were 'stop-over' facility with hotel accommodation to tempt
passengers to break journey in one or two destinations before reaching the
final.
However, in real sense,
one could only have a glimpse of a town close to an international airport for a
limited number of hours and not for days (free of charge)!
Fascinated by this
incentive, I decided to break journey in Bombay and Switzerland in the hope of
seeing for the first time in my life two cities, Bombay and Zurich; finally on
a sunny January morning I bid good bye to my mother with wet eyes to embark on
a life abroad.
Daily News - 1993- Life Abroad