The Story of Yaya

This year, my sister, her family and Manang Liza visited us from the Philippines and spent 2 weeks with us during the Christmas season. On the 3rd day of 4th day of our annual church dawn mass novena, I was able to bring along Manang Liza as without fail, she does the same novena dawn mass every year in the Philippines.

I saw how she enjoyed our church community here in Australia, and how after every dawn mass, there was breakfast enjoyed by all, with food generously cooked and brought by rostered volunteer parishioners.

So who is Manang Liza?
We also fondly call Manang Liza, Yaya. “Manang” is a common term in certain regions of the Philippines and it is like a respectful term for an adult female. “Yaya” in the Philippines is what people call the person (usually female) who looks after the children when parents need to go to work. They are more or less like the temporary “substitute” parent. They are not just a childcare worker as we know here in Australia as their jobs are not limited to looking after the children – more often, they do house chores as well like cooking, doing the washing, cleaning. It is not an easy job.

She came from the province of Pangasinan. When she was in high school and about 15 year old, she asked her mother for money to buy some school supplies. As they were poor, her mum couldn’t give her any money at all. This kind of frustrated her (this is basically a common reaction from young people) and she and a classmate of her hatched a plan to run away. They told a few of their neighbours that they are going to the city (Manila) and borrowed money from them to pay for their fare (she emphasizes that all those loans are all paid for by her eventually).
Her mother was of course as expected angry at her but couldn’t do anything anymore. It was common for people from the provinces to look for work in the city and I can imagine that because they didn’t have money to travel to Manila and look for her, all she could do at that time was to pray her daughter is safe.

Meanwhile, her daughter thankfully reached Manila safely. She and her friend both reached Libertad in Pasay City. Where they lived during this time was quite unclear, but one of the people they were living had told her that there was a sign hanging by the door of one of the houses in Pasay that says they are looking for a house helper.

She went to look at the house, found it and knocked.

Turned out it was the home of my grandmother (we call her Lola) 😊 who “interviewed” her and hired her. It was good luck that she came to the home of a loving person. As a mother, I was imagining all the possible things that could have gone wrong had they met the wrong kind of people.

So, Manang Liza became my Lola’s help. When Lola’s eldest child (my mum) became pregnant with her third child, she asked Manang Liza if she could move to my mum’s to help look after her children, which she did. And that’s when Manang Liza evolved to Yaya Liza, and where she has been from then on!!
She is now 69 years old, has never had a husband nor children of her own, and was content staying with us as part of our family. She looked after our family, me and my 4 siblings and each of us siblings’ friends call her Yaya. They are all fans of her cooking, specially her sinigang and “spigite” (spaghetti lol).
She had visited us here in Australia several times now and she is still looking after the family of my last sibling in the Philippines, specifically my sister’s only child.

Tomorrow she leaves Australia to go back home to the Philippines. We hope she enjoyed her stay with our family, we hope she enjoyed being around us as much as we enjoyed seeing her again and reminiscing the good ol’ days.

See you soon, Yaya!

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