(IPS) feature

Maria and Lucia (not their real names), friends for more than 10 years, are together most of the time. They have even started a catering business. On their day off, they go out for lunch or go shopping and every week, they go to church.

They are each other's coping mechanism in Kuwait, a country that is nothing like the one they left - the Philippines - and where they have no family.

''Of course it's difficult to be alone, but we knew what were getting into when we left,'' says Lucia. ''We did not come for fun, for good times, we came to work and save money.''

Lucia and Maria are nurses in a hospital in Kuwait city. Maria, who is in her mid-40s, has been there since 1978. She came with the first batch of 28 nurses that headed for Kuwait, looking for better income than what they could make in the Philippines.

Lucia arrived in the mid-80s, when she was 21. She had come at the advice of her brother who was already in Kuwait, but has now left.

''I didn't even know where Kuwait was, I actually wanted to go to Iran. But then I found out Kuwait had one of the highest income per capita in the world,'' recalls Maria. That was about a year before the Islamic revolution that changed the face of Iran for the decades to come.

''When I came we were treated very well, like VIPs, with free lodging and a good salary. Kuwaitis were also nice with us, there was interaction between us,'' she adds.

Little did she know that years from that moment, Kuwaitis would grasp the full extent of the wealth that bestowed on their country - and their attitude toward foreign labour, long the backbone of the country's workforce, would change.

Today, Lucia says, ''we're still in the same hostel where Maria arrived 20 years ago, but no revamping has ever been done to it, it's falling apart. I've not had a raise since 1987 although I've been promoted.''

In demand

Thanks to the experience the Filipino nurses have acquired in Kuwait, and their reputation for being good at their profession, they are now in demand in Europe, where living conditions and salaries are markedly better.

Lucia is preparing to leave for Ireland as dozens of other nurses are also preparing to depart from Kuwait, leaving the hospitals here without their valuable knowledge and know-how.

There are some 65,000 Filipino workers in Kuwait, some 30 percent of them in domestic work. The country ranks eighth among the top 10 destinations for the 840,000 Filipinos who leave for work each year.

Filipinos work in all sectors, from sales to waiting and nursing. While the majority of nurses in Kuwait have always been Filipino, this has started changing recently as many try to move to countries with better working conditions. It is now difficult to tell how many Filipino nurses there are in Kuwait.

But in general, foreign workers are everywhere, doing the jobs the Kuwaitis shun, which is almost everything. Kuwait has 2 million people, one-third of whom are Kuwaiti citizens and the rest foreigners.

''If it weren't for us, Kuwait would not be functioning,'' says one Filipino man, who requested anonymity.

This is a recurrent point in the conversations with Filipinos - anonymity. All those interviewed are reluctant to talk about what might be bothering them in their living conditions, often going to the extreme of saying that everything is absolutely fine when asked the question in a straightforward manner.

But others raise issues and grievances throughout the discussions. The next day, however comes a phone call - ''please don't quote us by name, you know, it might be a problem,'' they say. Why? ''Well, everything is fine here, but still. . .''

Second-class citizens

If everything is fine, then why not be quoted by name? Because everything is not fine. Kuwait is a small country, where everything goes around and the threat of deportation hangs in the air, even if it is not a daily occurrence.

Except for western expatriates, most, if not all foreign workers, are considered second-class citizens.

The difference in treatment goes for every aspect of life in Kuwait, from wages to having children. A foreign worker might live in Kuwait 20 years, but will still not be eligible for Kuwaiti nationality. Foreign workers are also not allowed to join unions.

The treatment of offenses regarding the sex trade differs. ''If we catch a foreign prostitute, we deport her immediately, no questions asked,'' says Abdallah Rashed, deputy director of the criminal investigation department.

Kuwaiti women caught prostituting themselves are asked not to do it again, then released.

For foreign women on a working visa in Kuwait, having a child is not easy. Depending on the type of visa they have, they may or may not be allowed to have children at all.

Domestic workers are on a specific type of visa and will get deported if they get pregnant, regardless of whether they were in a consenting relationship or if they were raped or abused.

To avoid deportation, many women get an abortion. However, it is difficult to tell how widespread abortions are, since they are illegal. One western woman in Kuwait admitted that her husband had one of those illegal abortion clinics and that he had a rather steady flow of 'clients'.

According to the Filipino women interviewed, Kuwaiti men often approach Asian women walking on the streets, using the line ''Two dinars, two dinars'' to suggest prostitution.

Two Kuwaiti dinars, (US$6) is a pittance for any job, but the women sometimes fall for it, desperate for money. Sometimes, they are forced into prostitution and work in horrible conditions, in small rooms with several beds in a row, with most of the money going into the pockets of the pimp.

Being in downtown Kuwait on Fridays and Sundays almost feels like being in Asia, as thousands of Filipinos, Sri Lankans, stroll around after church service.

Unfortunately, this is also where they are approached by male fellow foreign workers or locals and lured into a better paid job, which often turns out to be prostitution.

It is difficult to find and talk to the women caught in such networks. It is even more difficult to find the women domestic workers who are being abused or not paid - they are the ones who do not get a day off, often beaten by employers, and who will not be found strolling on a day off.

''We often get Asian patients at the hospital who have to be admitted because they're overworked or because of burns all over their body,'' says Maria, who points out that domestic workers are the worst off among all the foreign labour in Kuwait and in the rest of the Arab world. Majority of domestic workers in Kuwait are foreign, and Asian.

Soon after the Kuwait's liberation in 1991 after the Gulf War, the Philippine government banned the deployment of workers to Kuwait due to the increasingly high rates of physical, sexual and labour abuses of domestic workers. At one point, hundreds of domestic workers, fleeing their employers' houses, had sought refuge at the embassy.

In a 1995 report, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in some cases, the ''pattern of rape, physical assault and mistreatment of Asian maids takes place largely with impunity'' and that ''Kuwaiti law exacerbates the problem by excluding domestic workers from labour law protections''.

Situation improved

The same report had quoted Meshari al-Osaimi, former head of the Kuwait Lawyers' Association, as saying this exclusion creates many problems that need to be addressed given the large number of foreign domestic workers.

''It affects the atmosphere of work and the sense of what treatment maids are entitled to. In 1964, there were only a few hundred maids, today (1992) there are 200,000. Now their exclusion from the law is a human rights issue,'' she was quoted as saying.

Today, Filipino officials believe the situation has improved. Filipinos keep coming to Kuwait, because it seems that more than half of them are happy or at least content with their living conditions and the savings they can make and send back to their families.

This, in the end, is the sole reason why Filipinos are ready to spend years in solitude in countries that regard them as second-class citizens.