Assalamu Alaykum!

FOR the last 30 years, Filipino nurses have been serving the hospitals and clinics of Saudi Arabia. The advantages of going to this wonderful country aside from not needing to undergo any English proficiency examination is that it has one of the lowest taxes. Secondly, housing and transportation facilities are free for their employees. If one gets lucky, houses available for nurses are fully furnished. Furthermore, nurses can explore not only the wonders of the kingdom but also witness the diversity and richness of its culture.

In December 20, 2015, I finally had the chance to fulfill my dream of working abroad. Allow me to share to you some of the problems I have encountered. Upon arriving at the airport, everybody was covered in black cloaks which they call as an Abaya. Right there and then, I felt this sudden sadness because I realized I was miles away from home and would be away for quite a long time. Another problem I had was communication. The language was so foreign to me that it was not that easy for me to communicate and even if they were speaking in English, they had this accent that I was not used to and so communication was hard at first. Since not all patients understand English, we had to learn basic Arabic words which allowed us to exchange information with them and their families.

In Saudi, we cannot go out anytime we wanted especially us, females. At the hospital that I worked at, they had these policies that we had to follow. Whenever we needed to go grocery shopping, we were always provided a bus but we cannot go out anytime. They have this schedule of the time and day when we can go grocery shopping. During our days off, if we ever want to go out, a workmate needs to write a request letter to the owner of the hospital which needs approval. Though I was very thankful because we were always safe, I missed the freedom I had in the Philippines where I can go out anytime and do things like going for a drive or having long walks with my loved ones.

Working in Saudi definitely taught me a lot of things like how hard it is to earn money and how hard it is to be away from family and the love of my life. However, there is always two sides to a coin, I learned to be more appreciative of what I have and most importantly, what it really means to sacrifice. Let me end this by saying that there is always a reason for everything. God will bring us to places we never thought we would be, just trust the process and more importantly, trust in Him. Allow me to thank my workmates whom I had the pleasure of working with together with our good-hearted doctor: Dr. Fallah Ibrahim. Assalamu Alaykum! Carina May S. Antonio