I was eating breakfast in a Doha hotel last month. The restaurant was split in two by a series of white bed sheets strung from the roof. I sat on one side. About 80 Filipino men sat on the other. An instructor was lecturing them on worksite safety using an ageing overhead projector. I felt for them. It was a Sunday. The air was also stifling inside the restaurant and the men were struggling to stay awake.
The Philippines is a long way from the ‘old’ Silk Road. But it’s an integral part of the ‘new’ Silk Road. Its army of English-speaking workers is found all over the region from Hong Kong to Lebanon. Indeed, there are over 2.2 million Filipino workers in the Middle East alone. It’s a mind bending statistic. It means that more than 1 in 50 Filipinos live in a Middle East country.
