OUR TIMES 2 0 1 4 A U G U S T / S E P T E M B E R 45

HAT DOES IT MEAN TO CARE FORanother person’s child when your own is far

away? What does it mean to exist in a country onlyas long as you are employed by citizens of thatstate? What is it called when you work 24 hours aday caring for a family that becomes your family,because you live with your employer?

According to two Toronto artists, Althea Balmesand Jo SiMalaya Alcampo, it is called a labour oflove. The Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP), one visaoption under Canada’s Temporary Foreign WorkerProgram, is where the politics of labour meet thepolitics of love.

Balmes and Alcampo are the creators of LCPComics, and the project Kwentong Bayan: Labour of Love.

“In the Filipino language, kwentong bayan is theliteral translation of ‘community stories,’” reads LCPComics’ website. And the subtitle “Labour of Love”reflects the artists’ belief that community-basedartwork, and caregiving work, are rooted in love,are valuable, and deserve respect.

The not-yet-released comic book engages withthe experience of Filipino women who come toCanada on LCP visas, and the complex relation-ships that develop as a result of one of Canada’smore problematic immigration policies.

The LCP is a temporary foreign worker programthat allows workers to enter and work in Canada aslive-in caregivers for children under 18 years of age,elderly persons (65 years of age or over), or personswith disabilities. Caregivers must either work fulltime for 24 months or complete 3,900 workinghours in a minimum of 22 months. Four years fromtheir arrival they can apply for permanent residency.

While everyone, including live-in caregivers, whohas to leave their family to find work abroad expe-riences a sense of loss and hopes for reunification,LCP-ers are handed a surrogate family that theyoften grow to respect and care for, who is also theiremployer. This is one of the many complex aspects

of the LCP experience that Alcampo and Balmeshope to explore with Kwentong Bayan: Labour of Love.

Other aspects include community relations,family reunification, and the convoluted labourpolitics of the LCP. Any temporary foreign workerprogram is problematic, in that a participant’s immi-gration status depends on their employment status.This puts their employer in a position of power thatcan go totally unchallenged. If your right to existwithin Canadian borders, your ability to feed yourfamily, is contingent on you being employed, you’llbe less likely to defend your rights as a worker. As aresult, many migrant workers are regularly exploited.With “fear of being fired” equaling “fear of depor-tation,” temporary foreign workers are intimidatedinto silence. They have to be willing to do what-ever it takes to keep their jobs.

Now imagine being a migrant who has to live withyour boss. The LCP not only requires employment forstatus, but also requires the workers to live with theiremployer. This makes it difficult for LCP migrants to

WRITING PICTURES,

A Caregiver Comic BookDRAWING STORIES

B y H a s e e n a M a n e k

W

Artists Jo SiMalaya Alcampo (left) and Althea Balmes (right) are creating

a comic book, Kwentong Bayan: Labour of Love, with and about live-in

caregivers.

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46 A U G U S T / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 4 OUR TIMES

All of the

illustrations that

accompany this

article are from

the comic book

project Kwentong

Bayan: Labour

of Love.

LEFT: The writer

and artist place

themselves right

in the story.

OUR TIMES 2 0 1 4 A U G U S T / S E P T E M B E R 47

OUR TIMES 2 0 1 4 A U G U S T / S E P T E M B E R 49

create any other kind of life outside of their job. Theirjob is their life and they are on call 24/7.

Unfortunately, institutionalized support for programparticipants has decreased in recent years. Previously-existing organizations like Intercede (a Toronto-basedorganization that intervened on behalf of domesticworkers, caregivers, and their families) are no longerin operation, leaving a gap in support for caregiversthat has been filled by members of the communityand the Philippine diaspora.

Intercede was funded by three levels of govern-ment, and they provided services to caregivers, saysAlcampo. “Nothing like that exists on that levelnow in Canada. We’re hearing so much about thetemporary foreign worker program, but there isn’tso much talk about how to support the folks thatare coming and experiencing struggles within it.But, what I learned from my mentors at Intercedeis, you don’t have to wait for government to fundthese things; it can come from community.”

Balmes and Alcampo wanted to work in solidaritywith the caregivers, and to make a collaborativeeffort to understand what their experiences are like.

The artists first met at the Kapisanan PhilippineCentre for Arts & Culture, a creative hub in Toronto’sKensington Market area for young Filipino Canadians.They first worked together on Alcampo’s project“Singing Plants,” an interactive art installation withplants that sang when you touched them. Alcampocommissioned Balmes to illustrate buttons for her togive out at a conference in the Philippines, whereshe was to give a talk about her project.

“Jo pushed me to do the buttons,” says Balmes.“From there, it felt natural to want to collaboratemore and so I asked her if she was interested inmaking a comic book.”

Both Balmes and Alcampo were experiencedartivists by this point (artists who use their art as partof their activism). Alcampo is a volunteer with theCaregiver Connections, Education and SupportOrganization (CCESO), which advocates for care-

givers and newcomers to Toronto. She is also amember of the Kapwa collective, a group of FilipinoCanadian artists and critical thinkers, and she hasworked extensively with the Carlos Bulosan Theatre,which produces plays reflecting on “social and polit-ical issues affecting the Filipino and broadercommunity.” Balmes is an independent visual story-teller who once worked as a community organizerwith the Toronto chapter of Anakbayan, which shehelped establish. Anakbayan, as its website describes,“seeks to unite the youths from different sectors ofsociety to advance national freedom and genuinedemocracy in the Philippines.”

Neither Balmes nor Alcampo had ever worked ona comic before, though the accessibility of comicsas a means of communicating appealed to them. “Asa medium it’s a very interesting way to tell a story,”says Balmes. “It’s digestible, anyone can read it, fromlittle kids to an adult.”

“Live-in caregivers have been talked about a lotin newspaper articles,” she says, and in academia.“A lot of scholars have tackled the complexity ofthe program: family reunification, the injustices thathappen within the program, and the powerdynamic between female employers and employees.But you kind of have to be educated to be able todigest it. Reading a scholarly work is not for every-body. With comics, you don’t need to do a back-story; you don’t need to learn how to read a comic.Everything is there.”

Using this medium, the creators of Kwentong Bayanalso straddle an interesting intersection betweenPhilippine history and culture and the current livedexperience of Filipina caregivers, their families andthe greater Filipino-Canadian community. In thePhilippines, there is a rich history of comics that

Imagine being a migrant who has to live with your boss

OUR TIMES 2 0 1 4 A U G U S T / S E P T E M B E R 51

In the Philippines, there is a rich history of comics that engage with social and political issues.

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engage with social and political issues, somethingBalmes spoke about as part of her work withAnakbayan Toronto.

“I grew up with Pugad Baboy and I wanted toknow more about these old comics,” she explains.“I wanted to trace how it started and see who themain players were.” Pugad Baboy (translation:“swine’s nest”) is a comic strip created by Filipinocartoonist Apolonio “Pol” Medina, Jr. which coverseverything from domestic life, adventure anddrama, to political issues.

“It was interesting to see the cultural significanceof comics and how it played into Filipino culture,”she said, of her research. “A lot of the comedy, a lotof our humour, began in the comics.”

In a presentation she made called, “Filipino Komiks:100 years of history and its contribution to Philippineculture,” Balmes covered the unique role Filipinokomiks have played both as a source of entertainmentand as a platform through which the Filipino publiccan engage with social, political and economicissues of the time — in both urban and rural

communities, and across class and institutionalizededucation divides. In that same spirit, the two artistswant Kwentong Bayan to be an accessible, easilydigestible and visually interesting way for theFilipina caregivers to have their story told.

“When we first talked about it, we wanted theproject to be for the general public and for LCPemployers, to better understand Filipino culture.”However, as they began to interact more withcommunity members on the topic, Balmes andAlcampo realized that Kwentong Bayan could be aresource for caregivers as well.

“A lot of the time they don’t know their rights;they don’t know how to navigate the political systemand Canadian culture, because they weren’t reallyprepared for it,” says Balmes.

In this way, Kwentong Bayan lives up to the richhistory of Filipino visual literature, which over-comes social boundaries by serving as a resource formultiple communities, while also engaging audi-ences through a creative medium. “It’s broad enoughthat it would also be for people like us — advocates

and allies — and people in general who are inter-ested in the topic and Filipino culture,” says Balmes.

Kwentong Bayan is a more nuanced social instru-ment than even Pugad Baboy, because the creatorsplace themselves right in the story. “The comicbook is not just about the women in the program.It is about us,” says Balmes. “We are drawingourselves and writing ourselves into the story, sothat there’s more accountability in where the storyis coming from — from what perspective. It’s alsoa way for us to share our own adventures in learningmore about these women. Our history affects howwe engage with these women and with our culture.There’s no way to avoid it.”

“For me I think about indigineity” (of beingindigenous), comments Alcampo. “That meanslooking at things critically, but from within aculture. Some caregivers’ stories are heartbreaking,some stories are infuriating. We try to reflect onthat from within our culture and decide, politically,how the stories are going to be presented, how theyare going to be seen by certain audiences. Thecomic book is for everybody, but we don’t shy awayfrom our own location within a culture.”

Kwentong Bayan has been in the works for almosttwo years now, though Balmes and Alcampo formallystarted work, as illustrator and writer, respectively, atthe beginning of last year, when the two wereinvited to observe and participate as artists in aneight-week advocacy and leadership trainingprogram for Filipina live-in caregivers. It was orga-nized by former live-in caregivers and allies whovolunteer with Caregiver Connections (CCESO).

Balmes and Alcampo navigate storytelling,community engagement and cultural observationsas they share the experiences of caregivers, theirfamilies and community members in their soon-to-be published artivist manifesto. “The communityconstantly teaches us and inspires us as to what thepossibilities are,” says Alcampo.

Indeed, it is their research approach that makesthis book-in-progress even more special. The artistswork with the live-in caregivers, workshoppingideas and allowing the women to have a directvoice in how their stories are told. Says RobinFolvik of the Graphics History Collective, “It reallyis a community story, with the two who are workingon the comic bringing people together.”

In July of this year, as part of the Graphic HistoryProject, the Graphic History Collective published amini-comic by LCP Comics on key turning pointsin the history of the Live-in Caregiver Program. Thefull-length comic will be published in 2015.

Haseena Manek is a freelance writer, editor, photographer

and radio producer based in Toronto.

OUR TIMES 2 0 1 4 A U G U S T / S E P T E M B E R 53

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