The Silent grief of my heart

I became a "maid" at 11

I took the exam for this scholarship offered by this organization of the nuns when I was in Grade 6 but wasn't able to pass. And so, my sister who was the one who paid for the school fees in elementary didn't let me and my brother to study highschool yet because according to her we were not doing good.

So that school year 2010-2011 we didn't go to school. Until one day, my cousin's cousin who was from Cebu visited Bohol. And they were also looking for a helper in their house. So me and my other cousin decided to go with them. And as I remember that time we were very excited because it would be my first time also to board on a ship.

So, I and my cousin arrived in Cebu. Little did we know, we have different people to serve. So she was serving the other relatives while I was serving the cousin of my cousin. At first, homesickness caught me. You wouldn't expect an 11 year old would took the risk to be a "maid". I just remember one of my wants those days is to buy a foam mattress so that my younger siblings could sleep comfortably. And also to buy a TV for my younger siblings not to go to our neighborhood to watch teleseries. In the first month, I and my cousin were serving separate houses but later on we were serving one household. We had a lot of struggles when we were in the same house already because we are not eating properly. I remember one time they had a party, We were not given any foods. The most funny thing we did was when there was power outage while we were eating together with the kids, we grabbed the delicious from the table while they wouldn't see anything yet. That was very hilarious.

I and my cousin, was there for like 3 months and they just gave 3500 pesos and so we divided that to both of us. so we were really treated very bad.