We
have seen this posters numerous times already , so many times that it's no
longer making any sense at all. This poster I saw on the internet is really
interesting however this barely scratches the surface of the reality on being a
Filipino sailor, It does provide a general detail but not the specifics and
leaves a broader room for interpretation. Some of these facts reflect positive
and others negatively and some doesn’t provide the reality.
LOADS OF MONEY - true on a financial basis that
if you compare it via Philippine standards , Philippine money is way less than
that of a U.S. Dollar (or even a Euro). Believe it or not purchasing power in
the Philippines is bigger than western countries , and salaries for sailors are
based in foreign pay (in U.S. dollars). In the Philippines a 900 U.S. Dollar
for Salary for a sailor is a very big money but if you compare that salary in
the united states - it is just only equal to a salary of a local fast food
worker. If the Philippine peso had an equivalent to 1 : 1 to a U.S. dollar
(currently its 45 : 1 dollar exchange) , You definitely don’t want to be a
sailor anymore , chances are the 900 U.S. dollars would only just be an
equivalent of 900 Philippine Peso , and you absolutely know how limited a 900
pesos goes in the Philippines .In other words LOADS OF MONEY because of the
fundamental law of dollar exchange rate against the peso, it's how weak the
Philippine economy is.
Sailors have loads of money not because they
are paid high , but by because of the exchange rate from Philippines versus
foreign money. The salary of a sailor actually is equivalent to that of a
construction worker overseas.
By
the way salary is based to the rank of a sailor , Deck cadets are paid only
dirt cheap !! (or none at all)
ALCOHOL 24 x 7 - liquor is absolute cheap in
some cases , even way cheaper than a can of coca cola soft drink and not even
the tough restriction of anti-alcohol policy is not enough to deter a sailor
from drinking. Alcohol ban is implemented on board a ship but not a practice ,
more like a "necessary evil" in this community. For short - yes it’s
a 24 / 7 drinking galore !
GIRLFRIEND IN EVERY PORT. - not exactly a
girlfriend, but counts as a relationship in some extent, like sexual
relationship that money is involved in the middle. This phrase is somewhat
misprounced , the actual term for this should be "every prostitute in
every port". This is typically true especially if a sailor is stationed
near south America, where sex trade seems to be very common (and suspect even
legal). Thing here is this, ITS ALL ABOUT HUMAN NATURE - AND THIS INCLUDES SEX.
All of them have been exposed to months not seeing any female at which includes
their wives and real girlfriends in the Philippines, which results to them
resorting to "paid" sex. Now a days this just happens only to sailors
who get stationed in south America or in Asia .
Seamanloloko
????? Being direct - YES THAT IS ACTUALLY 150 PERCENT TRUE !!
ALWAYS SEASICK - This has two meanings , one is
biological and other is psychological. Biological in the sense that there is no
apparent cure for seasickness. A persons only best bet to alleviate this is
that to hope a person's body gets adjusted (or adapted) real quick on the
environment. This may takes weeks or a month especially to new sailors, for the
veterans - only takes a couple of hours
to adjust and not that severe. Psychological part is that it means that
sailors are lazy and use "Seasickness" as an excuse to get away from
work, even though they're already been sailors for decades.
DEALING WITH PIRATES EVERYDAY - The fact here
is this , not all sailors nor even a majority of them get to be stationed on
pirate infested areas. Only a small population of Filipino sailors get to deal
with this and in only a short amount of time, not every day. In reality this is
overly exaggerated accounts. The only thing you have to deal with here is the
rude and lack of proper manners of fellow sailors - in particular our own kind
.
There's
a saying : "the fiercest and most cold blooded maltreatment comes from
one's own kind" . That's how Filipino seaman's are in the actual work
GET TO SEE THE WORLD FOR FREE - this is the
most common (and oldest) propaganda you see when you study the course Bachelor
of Science in Marine Transportation. Most kids who study being sailor get
confused with this 90 percent of the time, plus add more to the confusion is
the quasi false "militaristic" kind of education propaganda and voila
you got tons of enrolees per sem. Little do they know that after that a lot of
injustice and maltreatment awaits them after they finished schooling such as NO GUARANTEED JOB ASSURANCE
AND SECURITY (YOU WONT GET EMPLOYED UNLESS YOU HAVE A SPONSOR - backer for short) , UNDERPAID, OVER
WORK AND EXPLOITED, AND WORST NO ACCESS TO A LAWYER OR LABOUR UNIONS. See the world free is just only half right
since a ship goes around on all sorts of places, technically a sailor is
basically imprisoned and trapped inside for the whole duration of the contract
with little or no chance of going to shore and most of the time you're not even
allowed to go out . If there is - its only less than 5 hours overall. In
reality it’s a slow painful death like prison.
Being
a sailor in the Philippines isn't exactly the most secured job around, its
CONTRACTUAL WORKER.
GLAMOUROUS LIFE. - There is another
misconception about being a sailor , true indeed that most of the sailors can
afford stuff that most people can't in the Philippines. They can afford that
not because Filipino sailors salaries are paid high from the start but because of
the Philippines PESO versus U.S. Dollar Difference (as what I mentioned
earlier) . In the Philippines that U.S. dollar (or european euro) salary
converted may mean a lot and can go a long way, In the U.S. and Europe that
salary received by a sailor is nothing more than the standard pay for
construction manual job which is not even enough to buy a thermal underwear for
winter on the local store there.
6 MONTHS LAND AND 6 MONTHS AT SEA - Typically
seafarers contracts ranges from 6 months to 10 months working in a ship, though
there are some reports that Greek employers hold their crew even longer that
lasted for years (and from what I heard the longest was 2 years) . Now if a
person pictures himself being into prison on the that duration then you'd
definitely know how ugly working of a sailor is., And after spending almost the
whole year being imprison on a ship , you get only a relief of two months
before again going back into prison er.. I mean working back on a ship and
repeating the horror again - it's like being in an environment with no TV, No
letters, No internet - nothing to keep yourself occupied beyond work . That is
the usual cycle of life of a sailor - rinse and repeat , you will miss and skip
a lot of important things in life during that time like your marriage
anniversary, you kids first birthday , etc. and as a result of being an absent
and never there , a sailor's life is nothing but a dysfunctional one.
UNEDUCATED FOOLS - This is somewhat half right. In some extent almost all Filipino sailors
did have a formal education on the college level, But if you ask what kind of
studies did he / she received in college or what kind of teaching methods are
used and in practice there , then I could say it's very limited and totally
unrelated on the actual job practice. One such sample is that most sailors
often tell as an excuse is that they study celestial navigation, marine
engineers etc. - those lectures in reality doesn’t even come close compared to
what doctors , lawyers, teachers or even engineers study on the course of his /
her college time, as a matter of fact you can finish the this so called "college
course within less than a year" (if your brain intelligence is equivalent
to that of a "doctor" or even a lawyer) . It's even debated that the
college course of a sailor (bachelor of science in marine transportation) is
not "bachelor of science" at all , in fact European countries
consider education on sailors to be technical and vocational type - (doesn't
even pass for a four year college course)
As
a sailor , a functioning brain is highly unnecessary on the job practice. If a
sailor has a brain , it's definitely not used for logical and analytic thinking
like some other professional jobs do or even used for work at all. - Its only
used for keeping him alive (like breathing and heartbeat pulse, similar to a
zombie or a mindless insect drone). And if in a special case a sailor has some
brains, chances are he / she should hid his talents otherwise some other
co-worker sailors will get jealous because of this (see their primitive
prehistoric brains ;) )
FIGHTING WARS - This problem is not directly
related and more of an indirectly problem. Earlier so called pioneers in
maritime education in the Philippines came from fundamentalist militaristic
schools (sort of like during the 1950's era were seafaring job wasn’t even heard
of back then). Despite this job being entirely civilian , it is often and
always get confused with the branch of the military (navy).Being a pinoy seaman
in reality has nothing to do with the military. We're not soldiers, were not a
foreign legion , or even come close to an armed militia . Seaman is nothing
more and is always a construction / maintenance worker , of if you put it it’s
a non-military and purely civilian work .If you look closely the closest
classification of a "seaman"
are more related to construction workers based in the middle east (and cousin
based on my observation) , the only difference is that instead of dry desert ,
a "seaman" is on wet water surroundings and inside a huge machine
(known as a ship). Both of these class of workers have the same type of
equipment and even job hierarchy , and yes seaman also has a foreman and is
just called in a different term called "bosun".
The
reason why pinoy seaman (or Marino) get confused often to the military is
because of simple common terminologies shared in work, (I admit these technical terminologies is
used in the military as well) . Beyond that there is nothing similar in anyway
at all in being a seaman to a navy,
If
we get to sign up on a contract, were given a set of working clothes and some
protective industrial equipment - nothing more nothing less , Definitely not
firearms , NO BDU's (battle dress uniforms), Not anything that blows up stuff
or hurt people.
GREAT SWIMMERS - Not all sailors are actually
swimmers or even good in the water to begin with. Some sailors (such as myself)
cannot swim at all , probably because we knew that once were in the water ,
that will be the end of us . So as much as possible we stay out of it. Working
as a sailor you don’t get to actually get to work submerged on the water , you
get to work on a ship which is basically floating on a water called sea - point
here is that swimming skills are not necessary.
NOTHING TO DO AT SEA - being a sailor, a lot of
people are basically wondering on what are we actually doing inside the ship
and are lead to believe that were are just doing nothing there but sit out our
fat asses during the whole duration of the whole contract, and to make it more
misleading is that pictures on sailors fed back in the Philippines are mostly
stuff related to barbecue grills and food, making people think that were just
there to eat , sleep and waste time.
Of
course the ship is a 24 / 7 workplace and a lot of times you get to work on the
weary hours of the night, and since it’s a 24/ 7 workplace it means that most
of the time there's no holidays and the work sailors do are maintenance
construction work. Expect that there will be situations that a sailor will be
dragged out in the middle of the night (as in 2am) just to do work and force
him / her on the working thread mill for more than 24 hours. Fine with some as
long as they're getting paid, but The biggest insult to that is that when the
first mate sees you're work time card (yes , we do have that in the ship)
registers beyond the normal 8 to 12 hours of work , he'd force you to cheat
your whole time card by reducing the extra working hours, making the other
excess working hours beyond 12 to be absolutely non-existent and totally unpaid
,
Imagine
a situation that you're working on one of the worst workplaces on earth and
you're not even getting paid for it, (or even being paid right)
Finally
I'm writing this not because of prejudice, but because of reality and
transparency on what is actually happening and in practice, this more fact than
the first law of thermodynamics. Fact that almost all of my own kind, refuse to
acknowledge or even believe that this is happening in the Philippine maritime
community. I am aware that my writing will always be the subject of skepticism
and criticism to my fellow brethren , but as writer and person who witnessed it
firsthand that is what I have to tell and I'm sticking to it.
