All things to all people

From 19 June 2009

The young Jordanian woman lies on her back, and her dark eyes flutter upward toward the midwife who massages her belly and smoothes wet strands of hair strewn across a pale face. Sunlight washes out the delivery room, and all is white and still. After the struggle, this strange quiet has settled over the maternity ward of the Italian Hospital in downtown Amman. Scrubbed in, I’m standing awkwardly in my sterile booties and gown next to a Filipina nurse named Evelyn. She has proudly shown me around her ward and the delivery records, detailing her daily duties, proudly introducing me to all the staff, Arab and Filipina. Evelyn is one of three Filipina nurses I met a couple days ago at a Pentecostal church serving Filipino migrant workers, and I have answered her invitation to see the facilities at this hospital serving lower and lower-middle class patients from East Amman.

For six days a week, sometimes working night and morning shifts back to back, Evelyn and her two Filipina co-workers use years of nursing training they received in the Philippines. “The Arab nurses are our practical helpers, but their training isn’t as good as ours,” Evelyn explains. “Here we do all the hands on work, the midwives and nurses together. Here we work as doctors in other hospitals. It is good work.”

“These are the delivery records,” Evelyn is saying, flipping through a green binder. “This month we have already delivered 152, so we’ll have twice that.” I’m scanning the mother’s age column: 17, 24, 18, 22, 19, 21, 17…so many young mothers. The most recent entry reads “24”, and I look back at the midwife and her patient. Maybe she already has a couple of children between those frowning wrinkles on her pale, sweaty forehead.

***

The Sri Lankan mass was scheduled for 3:30, but I was early. Walking up the steps to the chapel, I heard faint chanting, not from inside but from somewhere nearby. Slowly I walked down the steps and around the corner where around twenty Sri Lankan women, two Salvadorian sisters and a priest stood before a statue of Mary. Stepping as quietly as possible across the stone-paved courtyard, I came behind Sister Concy, who turned after a few seconds and greeted me warmly. “We’re saying the rosary,” she explained. “You are a Christian, no?” I nodded, realizing that in Jordan, indeed in many parts of the world, "Christian" and "Catholic" are tantamount. Of course I don’t know the prayers in English, so I stood beside them, hands clasped in front of me, wavering in the hottest part of the day. I stole a glance at the Sri Lankan priest, beads of sweat standing out in droplets on his dark face, made darker by the bleached whiteness of his vestments; he stole a glance back at me, and startled, I turned my attention to the Mary shrine.

Suddenly it all came together: Mary, her doe eyes cast heavenward in perfect appeal, eternally preparing herself for the sacrifice of her son; Mary, draped in a pale blue veil reminiscent of Arab covering but more relaxed; Mary, paler and fairer than any woman present in this chanting mass asking Mary to have mercy on them; these poor workers appealing to Mary, fairer than any employer they might have on earth; Mary, strength and weakness embodied before them, candles flickering and blood-red lilies trumpeting at her smooth, white feet which were not dirtied despite their catholic (universal) travel. Again, in the back of my mind, I heard Emily, transferred to Syria against her will by her multi-national company contract, saying, “I don’t want to go to Syria, but I will sacrifice for my family.” And I heard Marisol, an abused runaway maid living for 22 months in the Philippine Embassy shelter saying “I want to give my son a future”. Marisol seated beneath the shelter's altar with a figure of fairest Mary, Mary, the exemplary mother sacrificing for her son and the exemplary employer, the saint of migrant mothers laboring abroad for their sons.

When I clasp hands with Filipinos and Sri Lankans in mass, I am not Catholic, but I pray with Father O’Connell that God have mercy on these migrant workers far from home. When I clap to the beat of ribboned tambourines and shouting Filipinos, I am not Pentecostal, but I nod along with the pastor imploring workers to be careful when they are on the streets, to be obedient to their employers but to know their rights, too. Tagalog, Sinhala, Arabic – I don’t know these languages, yet I know intuitively what they are saying, what they are praying. To the younger workers I am a sister; the older, a daughter; but to most, I hope to be a friend. Although my skin and my hair and my youth betray my foreignness and the seriousness, the earnest desire with which I labor, I hope that as Cathie, one of the Filipina workers commented, my love for my work and purpose “shows on my face”.

"To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some." - 1 Corinthians 9:22