Kelly Alejandro III
I took Kelly Alejandro’s portrait this morning on board at coffee time. He is the chief cook on a container ship currently in dry dock for repairs.
We have an appointment in the evening at the Seamen’s Club. It will be quite short, for he is expected by his colleagues to go to the shopping centre in town.
His first name is the same as his father’s and grandfather’s.
He is 33 and lives in Lancaster New City, Cavite, south of Manila in the Philippines.
He has three sisters. One of them works for a shipping company. She encouraged him to leave his job as a nurse and join the maritime world. He did so in 2007, and his monthly salary rose from 200 to 900 dollars.
He married a medical technician in 2010. They have two daughters, aged five and seven. He would like to have a son.
He is employed by the same company on various container ships. The present one has a deadweight of 40,000 tonnes.
When he began, he had no formal training as a cook. He learned on the job, without any family culinary tradition to draw on.
He pays attention to the crew’s tastes and tries to cater for them. He knows that the quality of the food is very important for seafarers who are subject to demanding tasks and working hours. He quotes a master he once heard say: “Rows begin in the kitchen.”
He has a good relationship with the 25 members of the crew, from the top of the hierarchy to the bottom. The officers are Greek, and the crew are Filipino. He says that there is a pleasant atmosphere on board.
He wakes up at 5 a.m. and begins baking bread at 6 a.m. His duty ends after dinner, between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.; then comes the cleaning.
He is currently on a nine-month contract followed by one month off. His previous contract was harder: one year on board followed by three months off. His aim is to work as much as possible, as quickly as possible, in order to raise the money needed to buy a house and pay for his children’s education. In the meantime, his wife looks after them, sometimes with the help of a paid nanny.
When he reaches his goal, he will rejoin his family. He then plans to live a simple life with a job that brings in only what is necessary. His philosophy is that the more you earn, the more you want to earn, to the detriment of well-being. His future job will probably be in catering.
He communicates daily on the internet with his wife and children. It is costly, but it leaves him feeling less tired and able to go to sleep reassured.
He gets great satisfaction from a warm social life with the crew: outings into town, trips to the cinema and so on.
However, what makes him dream is walking down the gangway on the day he heads to the airport to go home. The worst thing is, of course, the reverse journey, which is harder to bear than the dangers of the sea or the difficulties of his work when the ship’s stability is threatened in bad weather.
As our interview draws to a close, he asks me about his appearance, for he looks younger than he is and has sometimes found it difficult to be recognised as the chief cook.
