The Mothers

I had also heard of a place that is sort of a halfway house for

prostitutes – run by former prostitutes. I went to see them to find

out what I could about these women – who came to Olongapo in search of

a white knight but instead only found nothing but despair.

As a way to begin, I search for an organization  called– Buklod – a

group of women fighting for their rights, led by Alma Bulawan.

Alma, herself a former prostitute who became a ' survivor' – a term

she applies to any woman who has successfully crossed the line of

respectability that society has drawn for any prostitute – has been at

the helm of Buklod for many years, starting a short time after she met

the American missionary who organized a few prostitutes in the city to

share their experiences and extend a helping hand to each other.

Founded in 1987, Buklod started with a few prostitutes like Bulawan

who became the core group of women who fought for women's rights in

Olongapo, the " sin city' of the Philippines during the Marcos era,

and advocated for the welfare of prostitutes.

Alma, who got pregnant by a Filipino before she worked at the Pussycat

bar in Olongapo's main street, was pushed to prostitution – like the

overwhelming majority of the other girls – by a combination of factors

like poverty, ignorance, and social pressure, like the one she got

from a relative who told her. " Better if you work in a bar, you might

meet and marry an American. What have you go to lose?"

Shunned during the day by the "respectable members" of the community,

while sought after at night by those seeking corporeal pleasure, these

women are trying to turn their lives around through education, which

they also hope would help them regain their sense of self-worth and

the dignity that they shed when they embraced the life of

prostitution.

Loss of self-respect, desperation, and misery attends the life of

prostitution, which is responsible for the high incidence of drug

abuse and alcoholism in these women—a vain attempt to self-medicate

and dilute their misery with chemical fixes.

In a room near " the Jungle", a street in Olongapo that leads to the

Subic Bay Freeport Zone—which got its name because of the black

Americans who frequented there exclusively, as opposed to the usual

haunts of white Americans at  Magsaysay drive and Gordon avenue—these

current and former prostitutes gather everyday to prepare for a high

school equivalency exam using learning modules from the Department of

Education.

During the night, most of the women work in bars in Barrio Barretto -

a place notorious in Olongapo for the flesh trade when the US Naval

base was still here -  but now remains the last few remaining plots of

ground in the city where retired GIs try to relive the good old days.

Although the flesh trade is still flourishing in Olongapo, most of the

customers are now Koreans rather than Americans, as shown by the

signages of bars built recently—which now uses Chinese characters, and

sports a more eastern packaging.

There was a woman I met there who had a family – a startling thing in

itself – but was still engaged in the ' oldest profession in the

world. " When I asked her why, her answer reflected the reality of her

situation – it was either do this or die. Sometimes life leaves you

with the most terrible options to chose from.

And there was nothing I could do maker her see things differently – no

argument I could think of in that moment to shift her point her view

to something more hopeful and real at the same time.

Because for women engaged in her profession the bar seems always

higher than for the rest of us. Once you are in the dirt, struggling

only makes things worse. These women endure dirty looks, condemnation,

and are treated as outcast of ' respectable society" – people who have

no idea what it feels like to be presented with their choices in life.