Here's a story shared to us by Marie, a Filipino working in Bahrain for which she recalls this as "A Talk to Remember".

It was a long and stressful day at work so I decided to stay late in a coffee shop in Busaiteen, a town North of Bahrain and ordered my favorite cappuccino and donuts to this Filipina cashier whose smile is endless.

While on my laptop, she came and said ‘Hi.’ Her reliever arrived so we freely talked and our talk went smoothly. I came to know that this Filipina cashier with her three children were abandoned by his husband who works in Saudi Arabia, went for another woman, and left no support. Her son has a blood ailment who must do weekly blood transfusion which costs Php 3,000 per session in the Philippines. She tried her fate in Bahrain to earn a living and support her family. She worked as domestic helper from her previous two employers and both didn’t go well. Back then, she recalls that she was eating twice a day only with two kubus, a staple flat bread in the Middle East. She also recalls that she runs for trash bins to eat left over foods to fill her hunger. She coped with all of these. There was also a time that she almost got raped and decided to run away from her employer and seek for the authority’s help. The rest was history.

These were only some of this Filipina cashier's painful experiences. While listening to her, I feel the pain and that I almost cried. And so I asked her, ‘So, with all of these, how are you able to put a big smile on your face?’ She simply said, Because our family became stronger after that and that God has blessed me with a better work now as a cashier.’

Overseas Filipino Workers are said to be heroes of our generation as a lot of money are remitted each day. But for this Filipina cashier, this is the fruit of her labor, the tears and joy of her soul. Her narrative is just one of a thousand stories in Bahrain.

Thus, I have learned that events of one's life must not dictate the outcome of oneself. Like Lorna, she chooses to be happy and works hard for what she has and refuses to live in her past. I guess, for this, she truly becomes a real hero.