http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1&section=0&article=100455&d=26&m=8&y=2007

Sunday, 26, August, 2007 (12, Sha`ban, 1428)


      Stranded Filipino Shepherdess Gives Up SR63,000, Wants to Go Home
      Rasheed Abou-Alsamh, Arab News
     
        
            

            Leonora Somera, aged 65, snapped during the interview with Arab 
News in Jeddah on Saturday. (AN photo by Rasheed Abou Alsamh)    
            
      JEDDAH, 26 August 2007 - It may sound incredible, but a Filipino woman 
who was hired by a Saudi family in 1987 as a domestic helper is now stranded at 
the Philippine Consulate in Jeddah after working as a shepherdess for 18 years 
in Al-Baha and weathering unpaid salaries, ice storms and being arrested 
several times by the police.

      "I want to go home as I don't want to die here," said Leonora Somera, 
aged 65, in an interview with Arab News yesterday. "My employer still owes me 
SR63,000 in back wages, but since it seems he cannot afford to pay me that 
amount, I'm ready to just go home."

      Misfer Al-Ghamdi became Somera's sponsor after his father died in early 
1988. Somera had joined the family in Riyadh in December of 1987, but after her 
sponsor died she moved to Al-Baha with her sponsor's son, his wife and 
children. There they left her in a large house to look after their goats, while 
they moved to Makkah for the education of their children.

      "I never dreamed that this would happen to me," the Nueva Ecija native 
said. "In the Philippines I was working as a bus conductor when my husband 
died. With a six-year-old daughter to support alone, I had no choice but to 
seek my fortune abroad. It was a colleague who suggested I apply to work as a 
maid in Saudi Arabia."

      Left on her own to tend to 42 goats, Somera had to take them up the 
mountain every morning for grazing and then bring them down in the evening. Her 
utter isolation was only broken by occasional chats with Filipino nurses who 
lived nearby and infrequent phone calls from her relatives back home. "The 
family I worked for only came to Baha during the school holidays. It was then 
that my sponsor would give me small amounts of money," she recounted, noting 
that her monthly salary was only SR500.

      Somera said that she occasionally had arguments with Al-Ghamdi over her 
delayed salaries, but to no avail. She estimates that she was only able to send 
home SR38,000 in the 18 years she lived in the Kingdom. At times she was so 
hard up for cash that she was forced to sell some of her goats.

      "I ate plenty of fresh fruits, but I don't like the taste of goat so I 
couldn't eat any of my animals. Instead I had chicken," she explained.

      Although the cold weather of Al-Baha forced Somera to constantly wear 
sweaters and woolen socks, she said she never really felt that lonely there. "I 
didn't get lonely though I was alone in the house. I would watch TV in the 
evenings - but it only had Arabic channels," she explained.

      Despite not feeling lonely, the shepherdess said that she had several 
run-ins with the authorities who were surprised to see a foreign woman tending 
to goats in such a remote area. "The police held me several times because I had 
no iqama or passport with me, but they always released me after I explained 
that my sponsor lived in Makkah and that this was my only livelihood," Somera 
explained.

      Asked why she did not run away sooner, Somera said that she was scared to 
do so because of the remoteness of where she lived. "I could have asked the 
Filipino nurses to help me, but they were too afraid that the police would 
blame them later for helping me escape," she said.

      But with Somera's sponsor heading fast toward bankruptcy, the shepherdess 
felt increasingly desperate at making ends meet. 

      She finally put out an appeal through the Filipino community that she 
wanted to be rescued, and a consular team visiting Al-Baha in December 2005 
managed to rescue her and bring her to the center for runaway maids at the 
Philippine Consulate in Jeddah.

      Twenty months later, Somera is still waiting to go home. After the 
consulate helped her file a case with the labor court against her employer to 
try and get back some of her owed wages, Al-Ghamdi never appeared in court and 
showed up only once at the consulate in Jeddah.

      "He came and spoke to me more than a year ago," said Philippine Consul 
General Pendosina Lomondot yesterday. "He pleaded insolvency and gave SR7,000 
for Somera. We have never heard from him since."

      Now, even though Somera is ready to go home without having recovered all 
of her back pay, Lomondot said that she cannot leave until the labor court 
issues her permission to do so.

      "We have to take her to the labor court in Makkah and file the 
undertaking that she is giving up on her claim," explained Welfare Officer 
Abdurajik "Jake" Samain.

      Somera's daughter is now an adult, aged 24, and works in a hotel in 
Manila. 

      "Please help me go home," Somera told this reporter yesterday, "I want to 
see my daughter."
     


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Kirim email ke