I Should Be Proud Of This...

The Maid turned Writer – Crisanta Sampang

By Myke

I watched the pilot episode of GMA 7’s OFW Diaries and there I rediscovered the feeling of living in a foreign land. Yep, I too was an OFW before, back in 2007 when I work as a hotel acoustic vocalist at night and during the weekends; and a kindergarten teacher at daytime. It was quite an experience for me.
At the pilot show of OFW Diaries, they featured Crisanta Sampang, a domestic helper from Canada who made it possible to succeed in a foreign country, a thousand miles from home.
Her story is inspiring. It’s simply because who would think that despite being busy doing household chores, cleaning some foreign employer’s house and doing the dishes for several years, she managed to pull herself out of the monotonous routine and published her own book. Yep, she is a writer. And she became a writer because the book chose her to be its author. The book came about, taken from her actual encounters and day to day experience which made it more interesting.
Her book is entitled, Maid In Singapore: The Serious, Quirky and Sometimes Absurd Life of a Domestic Worker, which made me more curious about it because she’s an OFW from Canada and yet she chose Singapore as the location/setting of the book. I heard that several Filipino directors and movie producers are scrambling to seek rights to produce a movie based from her book.

I think it’s an honest regard to the OFW life, since the writer itself is an OFW. And I must say that one could only understand that once he or she is faced with the real, actual experience.
I haven’t read the book yet, but I’m very much looking forward to have the book, I checked at PowerBooks and it is priced around P500 pesos. I don’t usually buy books this expensive but I would definitely buy this one. I’ll post a review once I finished reading the book. =)