By Marissa Michaels
ATHENS — After spending an hour leisurely sipping half a bottle of Coca-Cola, Noriel Cueto finally admitted that he was nervous being interviewed.
But seeing him navigate the immigrant-filled neighborhood of Kypseli in central Athens, you might not guess it. Cueto knew which café to sit in, identified all of the bakeries and brazenly asked some angsty teenagers with skateboards to take his picture. He pointed out each shop that had closed during Greece’s financial crisis.
He knows the neighborhood so well because a block away, Cueto, a live-in Filipino domestic worker stationed in Athens, shares an apartment with two relatives on his weekends off. The rent: 50 euros each month for two bedrooms.
Cueto and his relatives are just a few of the thousands of Filipinos staying in Athens as live-in domestic workers. These migrants, some undocumented, have been affected by Greece’s unstable financial picture, just like everyone else, but their struggles often go unnoticed.
With no experience in domestic work, Cueto journeyed to Greece at 19 because his aunt, already living in Athens, informed him of a job opening. “It’s my chance because my aunt is here,” he explained.
Cueto, 37, has worked in the household of Loula Kertsikoff for 18 years, since he left his job as a rice farmer in the Philippines. He sees work in Greece as an unmissable economic opportunity. “Not all my life planting rice, farming,” he said, clearly glad to have avoided such a path.
And as a domestic worker working with two others, cooking, driving, walking dogs and doing maintenance, Cueto has learned to feel at home.
“It’s like a family, actually,” Cueto said. He eats dinner with the family, goes on vacation with them and has even watched two young girls, Ariadne and Melina Kertsikoff, grow up.
“We are together every summer…They are very sweet girls,” he said, a smile wrinkling the corners of his eyes.
He became fluent in Greek along with the children in the family. “I learned from the kids. When I came, Ariadne and Melina were like one year old. From there, I learned. As they learned, I also learned,” he explained.
Though he cares for his Greek family, Cueto sometimes wishes he could return to the Philippines for good to be with his real family. His wife, Jinalyn, and kids moved back to the Philippines when Greece’s financial crisis hit, Jinalyn was fired and they could no longer afford to hire a caretaker for their children while they worked.
Now, he sends money home. Though Cueto considers himself lucky that he was able to keep his job during the crisis, he still laments the distance from his family. The two months he visits each year or so is not enough.
“I am worried because I am apart from my family, but I’m used to it because I’m here 18 years,” said Cueto. “When I sent them and I came back alone, I felt like I want to go back. Whatever we have, we have. And the important thing is that we’re all together.”
“Sometimes it’s hitting me a lot… I set my mind, I’m doing this for them…Teach your mind how to reduce pain or homesickness…I can make their future. So I set my mind for them, for their future, good living. Because as a farmer, I can’t do that,” Cueto added.
To combat his homesickness, Cueto calls his children several times a day. He rests assured that he is providing a better life for his kids than he had growing up, at very least in terms of financial stability.
Cueto has also managed to feel a sense of home in Athens’ bustling Filipino community.
Every Sunday he goes to church with other Filipinos and he eats at a local Filipino restaurant, Kabayan. One recent Sunday, he planned to attend a celebration of the Philippines’ Independence Day at the Panathenaic Stadium.
“They are happy to be here. You feel like you are home. You are free, not like in other countries that have no parties, no alcohol, no cigarettes. Here, it is open. You can do whatever,” he said of Filipino immigrants.
And he lives in Kypseli, a neighborhood filled with immigrants from the Philippines, Albania, Georgia, and Ethiopia.
When his first son, Lloyd Alexander, attended Greek school, he enjoyed the diversity there. The multicultural kids in school were welcoming. Cueto said, “We can see their nation, their culture. They are friends. It’s very nice to study with other nations.”
Lloyd Alexander even liked Greek education better than his schooling in the Philippines. According to Cueto, the son has said, “Father, I want to go back to Greece. And I said, “OK you can study well, be a good boy, and I will take you back to Greece when you’re grown enough.”
Certainly, Cueto hopes to be reunited with his family one day for good, whether that be in Greece or the Philippines. In the meantime, he has managed to balance his multiple families and care for them all.
