Saturday, May 9, 2009

“BABALIK NA SI MA’AM”(Documentaries)

“BABALIK NA SI MA’AM”
I WITNESS

HOST
Howie Severino

CAST
Regine de Ocampo
DH and Martial Arts Teacher

Mercy Elegaro
DH and former teacher

Alice Cheung
Employee of Mercy

Ambrose Cheung and Samantha Cheung
Mga Alaga ni Mercy

Raul Roco
Secretary of Education

Daisy Mandap
Editor in chief. THE SUN

Sammy Saludares

Rizalyn Abello
Teacher and former DH

Dr. Edna Diaz
Superintendent, DepEd

Hermie Aquino
Teacher

Josefa
Pricipal

Erlinda Reyes
Superintendent, DepEd




SYNOPSIS

In Hong Kong, Howie meets domestic helpers who were once teachers in the Philippines. They gave up their teaching vocation to seek better paying jobs abroad. But when a government program offers them the opportunity to return to the Philippines with the assurance of work in public schools, some of them grab the chance.

The center of the story in "Babalik na si Ma'am" revolves around Mercy Elegado who, after working in Hong Kong for more than a decade, decides to resume other profession among kin back in Isabela.
What makes Mercy's story memorable are her relations with the Cheung family, for whom she had been working for six years before she decided to return home. Moving indeed were the scenes showing Mercy and her three young wards in the course of their lengthy parting, with Mercy wondering how the youngest, for which she had been caring since his birth, would fare at night without her at his side.
At the airport, the children and their mother embrace Mercy, with the mother telling Mercy that she must return to Hong Kong soon to visit them "this time not as an employee but as our friend."
But as Severino says, "Mercy had been looking after a family in Hong Kong, in Isabela, she would be looking after the children of an entire barangay." "Babalik na si Ma'am" closes with a scene in which Mercy walks among her students, all of them calling out to her: "Bye, Ma'am, bye Ma'am," surely the culmination of a dream she had nursed through the lonely years in Hong Kong.


COMMENT

This is a story of the OFW in Hongkong. Being a DH in abroad is not easy. You need to suffer a lot. You need to get far from your family in order to gain money and it is not easy for a mother to left her family. And the bitter of it is to sacrifice their profession.

Pinay DH's in Hong Kong longing the chance to be called 'Ma'am' by their students, instead of having to call their employers 'Ma'am' every day."

I can say that these teachers are true heroes because despite of a big salary and dollar money in Hongkong they chose to go home in our country to practice their profession and serve their co-Filipinos.

And I salute these teachers who want to work in their own mother land, our country the Philippines.

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