Abused domestic rose to the occasion to be crowned queen of khanfaroosh
▶ Charlene Alfonzo’s cakes are the talk of Ras Al Khaimah. But it’s been a long journey for the Filipina baker who once knew only hunger and penury, as Anna Zacharias discovers
We have a secret recipe and a lot of our customers ask for it, but our boss told me not to tell. That recipe is just for me and my sister CHARLENE ALFONZO Baker
For nearly 20 years, Asayel King of Juices has been the place to go in Ras Al Khaimah for khanfaroosh. But few people know that the woman who helped to popularise the Emirati saffron cakes is Charlene Alfonzo, a former domestic worker from the Philippines.
Her khanfaroosh recipe made Asayel one of the most popular Old RAK Corniche eateries and brought the Emirati snack into the public domain long before Emirati cafeterias became ubiquitous.
“I am very famous for khanfaroosh,” says Ms Alfonzo, 44, who now works in the craft shop next door to Asayel.
“We have a secret recipe and a lot of our customers ask for it, but our boss told me not tell. That recipe is just for me and my sister.”
Ms Alfonzo came to the UAE in 1993 as a teenager from a village on Mindanoa island to support her mother, three sisters and three brothers.
“I was young, maybe 14 or 16, but the agency changed my age,” she says. “I wanted to work. We were poor. We don’t have a father. That’s why I came here to work in the UAE. It was my idea because I saw a lot of people come, make a lot of money and they said abroad was a nice place.”
She had heard of violence suffered by domestic workers but was determined to travel.
Her experience with her first family in Al Rams, Ras Al Khaimah, was positive. When she changed employers and moved to a different emirate, life became more difficult. “I had one year without salary.”
Her employer did not pay her wages. She often went hungry. Instead of being given a private room with a door, she slept on a mattress in a hall with the family’s cat. “If I [knelt] in prayer, there was so much cat hair.”
She fled twice. The first time she took a taxi to her agency. They returned her to the employer. The second time, she told her employer that if they tried to stop her, she would seek help from the Philippines embassy. They agreed to let her leave.
She stayed with a friend in Ras Al Khaimah and walked door to door in the local market, asking for work. There, she met her current employer. He gave her work as a sales clerk in a shop before they opened the Asayel King of Juices cafeteria about 18 years ago.
Business did not go well at first. Other employees slept on the job and often they would make only Dh50 a day. But they moved location to the Old Corniche, and Ms Alfonzo’s sponsor taught her how to make luqaimat dumplings, thin regag and khameer bread, chebab pancakes, balaleet noodles and khanfaroosh cakes.
Ms Alfonzo perfected the recipes and was the first to sell the Emirati snacks the Old Town became famous for. Asayel now employs a staff of about 10. Three of her sisters, her brother and a cousin have all followed her to the UAE.
“I’ve been here since I was young,” Ms Alfonzo says. “It changed my life. Now I have a house in the Philippines, I took my mother to Saudi to do the Hajj and we eat well.”
Her siblings cannot imagine what would have happened if their eldest sister had not left the Philippines. “Maybe we would have nothing,” says her sister, Darwaiza Dialawe, 35, a school bus warden in Ras Al Khaimah. “Mashallah, she’s very strong.”
But creating a life outside the country has held other challenges. Ms Alfonzo’s daughter was born with omphalocele, a condition where her liver was exposed because of a hole in the navel.
The two-year-old has had four operations and her medical bills total Dh110,000. The hospital will not issue a birth certificate until the bill is paid.
“So she doesn’t have a passport, she doesn’t have a visa,” Ms Alfonzo says.
Prospective workers must have courage, she says. “I would advise them first to trust God and second, they should be brave. They must be strong persons who are not afraid of anything.
“I work hard but I’ve had so many bad experiences. Nobody has helped me. That’s why my faith is very strong.”