A DOLLAR MULE
Lifted from a shared post.
Foreword by Joffre Balce
While the current admistration subtly initindates or, with their allies in media & civil society dismiss our protests as insignificant ,& unwurthy of attention ...
This is why global Filipinos are in support of a President that gave hope & went the distance no other President in history has in his term.
Happy 80th Birthday, Dude!
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28 March 2025
A Love Letter (Sort Of) from a Dollar Mule to OFWs
They say time heals all wounds—but what they don’t tell you is that healing is expensive. And sometimes, the only currency accepted is sacrifice. You can’t swipe a card for peace of mind. GCash and Maya won’t save your sanity. And GrabFood sure as hell can’t deliver dignity.
Fifteen years ago, sometime in 2010, I began the life of a Dollar Mule. This was 4–5 years after I packed up my kids and whatever was left of my sanity and left a home that felt more like a war zone than a safe haven. It had been four years since I stopped flinching at the sound of footsteps—his footsteps. The hardcore meth head of an ex-husband who used my body like a punching bag and my salary like it was his inheritance. Four years since bruises became as routine as morning coffee. Since he held my ATM card like a hostage note and gave me twenty pesos a day—for fare and food. Twenty pesos. A whole twenty. Enough to choose between surviving or not fainting. He, of course, always had enough for his deadly vice. Meth doesn’t come cheap, but hey, at least it never asked him to be a decent father.
Leaving him wasn’t the hardest part. Survival was.
How do you pay for electricity when the light at the end of the tunnel is always flickering? How do you keep a fridge full when your heart is already empty? How do you become both mother and father when you’re not even sure how to be yourself?
You work.
I clawed my way up the call center ladder—agent, trainer, program head, operations director. I climbed fast, but office politics climbed faster and shoved a knife in my back while handing me a slice of cake. So in 2010, I said, “F*ck it. Let’s freelance!” I started working for clients in the U.S.... the kind who paid in dollars and didn’t ask about the bags under your eyes or why you look like a walking mental breakdown with a profile on Upwork.
I traded sunrises for sign-offs. Late-night talks with my then three teenage kids for deadlines and time tracking. While other mothers cooked adobo for dinner, I stirred instant coffee into chipped mugs and muttered thank yous to the gods each time my children made it home from school in one piece. Alive. Unmolested. Unkidnapped.
I became a Dollar Mule. And slowly, but surely, the Dollar Mule exhaled.
Dollar Mules and OFWs, well, we are of the same species. We both speak fluent SACRIFICE. We both understand the currency of trade-offs. Dollar Mules like me, we work through the night while our children sleep through their childhoods. We miss birthdays, school recitals, PTA meetings where other moms compare lunch boxes and husbands. We sit alone, behind a flickering laptop in the dead of night, fixing some American client’s broken website while our own child sleeps in the next room—unhugged, unheard, nursing a bad day alone because Mama had to work. We hear their sobs through the wall and pretend we don’t. We tell ourselves this is love, too. Just… the kind that pays the bills.
We say “yes” to work and “next time” to everything else. We sacrifice memories for money. Presence for provision. And the quiet guilt that comes with it is a tune we know by heart.
And that’s why many of us, Dollar Mules and OFWs alike, pledged allegiance to the man who gave us something no other president bothered to—safety. Not pocket change. Not token ayuda. Just plain, non-negotiable safety. Something rare. Something expensive. Something we’d never known until Digong came along.
OFWs? Their sacrifice is ultimate. Imagine doing a Zoom call at your father’s wake because you can’t go home in the Philippines. Imagine telling your kid, “I’ll be home soon,” for the fifth Christmas in a row. Imagine being a domestic helper taking care of some rich brat while your own child is being raised by your parents who are too tired to discipline and too old to understand TikTok.
Now imagine being physically and sexu@lly abused by your boss and still staying because you need to send money home for your child’s asthma meds. And if, heaven forbid, you defend yourself and your boss dies—you end up in jail. Then Duterte shows up in your story… not with hashtags or hollow statements, but with real action. Lawyers. Protection. A phone call. A rescue.
Because during his time, something shifted.
For the first time in forever, we didn’t live on high alert. We didn’t refresh newsfeeds to see who got shot, raped, or robbed on our street. We didn’t live on a diet of fear.
We owed that peace not to therapy, or the rising moon, or positive thinking.
We owed it to a man named Duterte.
When I still wasn’t a Dollar Mule, he handed me a life where there were times when the ex was too scared to buy meth. Too paranoid because his name was on the surveillance list. I’d watch him pace the room, panic in his fingertips as he texted his PNP buddies—“Pre, naa ko sa listahan?”—and then watch the blood drain from his face when the replies came in fast and cold: “Naa ka sa listahan, pre.” He was finally afraid. Not of God. Not of karma. But of consequence. And for once, it wasn’t me shaking. It was him.
I don’t know what that list did for other people. But for me? It gave me sleep. It gave me the sound of three children breathing in a room, safe, unharmed, unbothered. It gave me mornings without panic.
And finally, when I became a Dollar Mule, I could sleep in the mornings while my kids were at school, walking the streets of Davao like ordinary teenagers finally tasting a life they were once robbed of. No more jolting awake at every tricycle engine or bark of a stray dog, no more whispering desperate prayers into the sheets, begging whatever god was on duty to keep them safe. I could rest. Not because life got easier but because I know for sure, my children weren’t in danger just by stepping outside. They could laugh, linger after class, fall in love, be kids. Because their childhood was chaos but their teenage years, at least, had peace. And for that, I owe FPRRD.
And I know OFWs felt this, too—from afar. They left knowing their loved ones back home weren’t dodging bullets or monsters. And for once, monsters feared the government more than civilians feared the monsters.
And now?
Now the same man who gave us that rare, radical thing called peace is being dragged to The Hague. Not by enemies, mind you. But by former allies. Political barnacles now sucking on a new host. The same people who cheered him on are now pushing him into a cage and calling it justice.
So the OFWs, the ones who bend their backs so the country wouldn’t break completely, are saying: Not this time, Satanas! Not this man!
They’re exercising their freedom of expression—not just in tweets and cardboard signs but in cold, hard cash. Or the lack of it. A “zero remittance week.” A protest disguised as a financial migraine for the government. And suddenly, the same government that ignored them is listening.
First, they scoffed. “Go ahead,” they said. “You won’t make a dent.”
Translation: You’re not people. You’re pipelines. Currency dispensers with Wi-Fi.
But then came the noise. The kind of noise money makes when it doesn’t show up.
Enter Juan Ponce Enrile, the embalmed relic of Philippine politics, older than sin and twice as smug. He looked straight into the camera and “reminded” OFWs that their privileges could be revoked. Tax exemptions? Gone. Travel rights? Gone. Jobs abroad? Poof.
Translation? Stay in your lane. The government owns you.
I had to wear sunglasses to read that statement—the glare of the truth was blinding!
Then came Malacañang’s gentle gaslight: “We don’t believe OFWs will participate. They won’t let their families suffer.”
Oh really?
Did they forget who OFWs are? They eat suffering for breakfast. They’ve nursed heartbreak, homesickness, and humiliation for decades without flinching. They will make tinapa taste like wagyu if they have to.
Then the cherry on top: “The government is not your enemy. We’re your ally. But if anyone incited this? Sedition. You’ll be jailed.”
Translation? We’re your friend… until you stop giving.
This government doesn’t love OFWs. It loves their money. It worships the GDP they prop up with backaches and broken dreams. But the moment they demand accountability, scream #bringhimhome at the top of their lungs under the European skies and on American soils and condemn their ways,they’re treated like faulty ATMs.
I’m not an OFW in the traditional sense. I don’t change bedpans in Brussels or teach ESL in Seoul. I don’t fix elevators in Dubai or mop floors in Rome. But I work U.S. hours, invoice in dollars, and pay Davao Light & Power Company in pesos. I am a Dollar Mule. A silent beast of burden dragging economic survival through a digital desert.
We exist too. Quietly. Uncelebrated. Necessary.
And if they’re willing to threaten the most celebrated heroes of this country, what chance do people like me have? We who made the brutal choice to stay and starve—or leave and lose parts of ourselves we can never get back?
But here’s what they keep forgetting.
OFWs and Dollar Mules are not ATMs. We are not numbers on a dashboard. We are not economic inputs. We are the mother who missed her daughter’s graduation. The son who watched his father’s burial on FaceTime. The wife who gave birth without her husband. The husband who came home to a child who no longer recognized him.
Do they see this? Do they feel this?
If Duterte can face the world and say, “I take full responsibility,” will the current man in Malacañang take full responsibility too? For breaking the faith of a people who only ever asked for safety in exchange for their pain?
Does he know what public service means? Or is he too busy curating hashtags for his next rebrand?
But I have a funny feeling that maybe he’s starting to feel the heat. Because OFWs, the quiet Titans of this country, are finally roaring. And he? He is the first president in history to be on the receiving end of their wrath.
It is very telling.
It is indeed Bagong Pilipinas.
To withhold love in the form of currency is no small thing. It is the ultimate heartbreak. And they think they can threaten OFWs into compliance? Please. These people have survived war zones in aprons. They’ve scrubbed dignity back into their lives with steel wool and skin infections. You can’t scare the unbreakable.
They can break OFW hearts. But they will never break their will.
Not now. Not ever.
—Kooks D., Open Journal, 3.27.25, 10:51PM
P.S. Now seriously contemplating not to send that invoice next week. Maybe the small village I feed will feel the pinch, and maybe we’ll have to get creative with sardines and rice. Or go full-on bulad and scrambled eggs. Or just OMAD. 🤔
Disclaimer: This is not news. This is just me, bleeding thoughts onto a screen because it’s cheaper than therapy. Call it whatever you like but I call it trauma karaoke. Yeah, no one asked for it, it’s probably off-key, but damn it, I’m singing anyway… because
#bringhimhome. #Dutertelegacy.#JusticeForDuterte. #SalamatTatayDigong.
#NotYourATM.
#OFWPower
#NeverAgain!
📸 📷 🖼
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