Hong Kong domestic helper Dolores Balladares Pelaez arranges Undas prayers for her family from afar

Dolores Balladares Pelaez, a 56-year-old domestic helper who chairs United Filipinos in Hong Kong, told the South China Morning Post she has not spent Undas in the Philippines in her 32 years in Hong Kong. This year she is again arranging prayers from afar for her late father and four siblings.

Dolores Balladares Pelaez has lived and worked in Hong Kong for more than three decades without once returning to the Philippines for Undas, the annual two-day observance honouring the dead, the South China Morning Post reported on 1 November.

This year the 56-year-old domestic helper is again arranging prayers from afar for her late father and four siblings. She called her mother and niece in Laguna province to discuss hiring a prayer leader to visit the family home, and her sisters-in-law were also invited to remember their deceased husbands.

Pelaez told the Post that such gatherings usually lasted four to five hours, after which the family provided food and drinks to the prayer group. She will watch it all through a screen in Hong Kong.

"During the pandemic, I wished to go home and see my siblings, but [because of] uncertainties at work and difficult conditions, I decided not to leave Hong Kong," she said.

A holiday spent apart

Observed on 1 and 2 November, Undas combines All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, when millions of Filipino families visit cemeteries, offer prayers and hold family gatherings. The Post wrote that for overseas Filipino workers the occasion carries a dual heartache: mourning the departed while separated from the living relatives who gather to keep their memories alive.

From abroad, migrant workers send money, coordinate preparations and pray quietly on their own, the Post reported, but recreating the shared meals and stories that animate the tradition remains nearly impossible.

Pelaez, who chairs the migrant alliance United Filipinos in Hong Kong, said her trips home usually coincided with Christmas or the end of a two-year employment contract rather than Undas. "In my 32 years in Hong Kong, I didn't spend Undas in our country," she said.

Her prayers fit around her single rest day each week. Her 93-year-old mother now leads prayers at home with help from younger relatives, and Pelaez said visiting the cemetery would take between three and four hours, making the journey too physically demanding.

Leading Unifil

The SUN Hong Kong reported in November 2023 that United Filipinos in Hong Kong (Unifil-Migrante HK) re-elected Balladares as chairperson for the 19th straight year, unopposed, at a congress attended by about 200 members from 34 affiliate organisations.

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