Bamboozled

In this story, Edith Santos, a 20-year-old Filipina from the Visayas region of the Philippines has been pushed to the brink of financial distress and is desperately searching for ways to support herself and her family. A fast-talking con man has come to her village of Palo, telling of lucrative overseas opportunities for Filipinas in the Middle East. Lured by the recruiter's false promises of big paychecks, plush living conditions, and exciting jobs, Edith is easily convinced to sign a 2-year contract believing this is her best opportunity to succeed financially. It is anything but.

She thinks she's being hired as a professional housekeeper for a well-to-do Middle Eastern family and is anticipating the promised position as its professional housekeeper. She quickly learns that instead of being hired, she has been bought, literally becoming this family's domestic slave, subject to whatever cruelties all its members, including its children, wish to inflict upon her. Under Syrian law, overseas workers like Edith have no human rights, therefore there is no recourse to appeal to the authorities. Escape is always on her mind. But even if she manages to escape the house, she cannot leave the country without an exit visa which needs approval by the employer from whom she is escaping.

Edith has definitely been bamboozled. It is estimated that 60% of Filipina women who work in the Middle East are subject to the kafala system, which generally binds migrant workers to their employers, resulting in the confiscation of their passports and often leading to their imprisonment and the ravaging of their mental and physical health until their contracts come to an end. Try as good people might to eradicate human trafficking, the issue of poverty must be addressed first. The desperation that poverty inflicts on women like Edith and thousands of Filipinas like her, causes good women, mostly mothers, to take desperate chances that lead them into the dens of thieves and wolves known as the web of human trafficking. Bamboozled hopes to keep a spotlight on this travesty.