Currently Instrument Procedures Handbook: FAA-H-8261-1A (FAA Handbooks series) By Federal Aviation Administration see related

It’s 5 pm in West Central Africa. I was checking the news back home on Inquirer.net, when a Globe pop-up advertisement came up and said something like: hear your child’s first words from across the world. Beside it was an advertisement with a kid wearing a Tesoro’s barong.

It felt like a knife plunged and twisted into my heart, only more painful. I remembered my son and how I’m not there to see him grow. In a picture from my brother’s wedding, he was wearing a barong just like the one in the advertisement. Tears always well up when I remember that I’m not there to see and guide him as he grows up.

I remember my own childhood, when my father went to the Middle East to work. I remember my loneliness as a kid, seeing the other kids with their own fathers. I promised myself then that when I have my own family, I wouldn’t leave them. And now here I am, half-way around the world, in a god-forsaken place full of wild people. It’s a country like our own, but much, much worse. We’re lucky we haven’t reached their stage. Here I am, eating the words of a promise to myself.

Separation from your family is always hard, especially if it’s your first time out of the country and the place you’ve gone to is one God seemed to forget. I experienced the culture shock I’d expected, but before I got deployed I had studied the place to minimize and control the shock.

Here I have experienced getting mobbed in a vehicle like in the movie “Black Hawk Down.” I’ve also bluffed our way out of trouble when we accidentally rammed a pick-up truck driving erratically, full of local police armed with AK-47’s. It’s a good thing they’re afraid of “mendele” (“White man,” they call us here). I fell sick with malaria twice; I nearly died the first time. One of our pilots did die of malaria two weeks before his return home - very sad, but that’s the reality here.

Physically, it’s hard to live here. You have to find your own place to live, your own source of food, electricity & water, and also security for your house.

The hardest part is the loneliness when the work day is over and you’re cooking you own food, with your mind wandering back home, back home, back home…They work us like horses but don’t increase our salaries. To add insult, they delay our overtime pay when we ask for a raise as the prices of basic commodities increase.

Realizing the hopeless situation in our aviation industry, I had left for greener pastures. Change is one of the constant things in this world; those who can’t adapt are eventually left behind. For my families’ future and survival, I threw caution to the winds and accepted the contract offered to me, preparing my heart and soul for the journey that eventually changed me.

We take it all for granted back home, but you get to appreciate your country, your people, your training when you’re outside. You’re forced to open your eyes and realize that we have a great people and that we can make it good provided that we have the right environment.

My boss told me to shut-up in training. I suspect he doesn’t want me to leave him; they value Filipinos here because we can speak English and also because of our training. Though I was trying to keep a low profile, I was noticed by Canadians working as advisors from ICAO to this country.

On the first day of training, we had to introduce ourselves and our backgrounds. These guys noticed me because of my experience as a radar air traffic controller & my “very good English.”

It’s funny. Back in the Philippines, my co-workers were always chiding me because I spoke English like a foreigner, only to find out that outside the Philippines, it’s to your advantage if you can speak this way.

By pulling some weight, the Canadians got me to assist them. I was enjoying the stint because it was almost like doing my old job in the Philippines. My boss worried that I would leave him, but I promised him that I would come back, so here I am, back in the bush, running an airline and waiting for the six months to be over so I could go back to see my family in Philippines.

The old-timers here are right. It often helps not to look at the pictures of your family, not to remember them. But it’s very hard to do that, because you deny yourself, your heart and your soul that way.

Living far away from home changes you, some good and some bad. I hope it doesn’t change me too much. I always pray that God does not stop giving me strength and patience, because I want to save enough money to relocate my family to another country for a better future. (Many of my friends’ and classmates’ families are already out.)

I also hope that the Philippines will pull through her troubles and be the country Jose Rizal hoped it would be. Sadly it’s still the same now as it was in his time. We’re doomed to make the same mistakes if we do not learn from the past. Meanwhile I save and persevere for my family…

ouch*