How Picking Cherries From a Tree Reminded Me That Every Sacrifice Has a Purpose By Rolyn Oyanib
- thevoiceofdomesticworkers
- 32 minutes ago
- 5 min read
There are days that arrive like a gentle reminder from the universe that life is not only made of hard things. That somewhere between the early mornings and the long hours and the quiet sacrifices made far from home, there is also room for sweetness. My day at Felderland Farm on the fifth of July was exactly that kind of reminder. And I will carry it with me for a very long time.
As a domestic worker, my days are shaped by responsibility. There are routines to maintain, households to keep running, families to care for with attention and dedication and genuine love. That work is meaningful and I do not take it lightly. But it is also relentless in the way that only work without clear boundaries can be, and there are moments when the weight of it settles so gradually that you barely notice how heavy it has become until something lifts it unexpectedly and you feel, all at once, how much lighter you are capable of feeling.
Walking into Felderland Farm lifted that weight immediately. The orchard stretched out around us, quiet and generous, the cherry trees standing full and unhurried in the summer air. I had never picked a fresh cherry straight from a tree before. That might seem like a small thing to someone who grew up with orchards nearby, but for me it was genuinely new, a first, the kind of simple experience that arrives late in life and surprises you with how much it means. I reached up to the nearest branch, found a cluster of cherries deep and dark with ripeness, and picked one. Then I ate it right there, standing underneath the tree that had grown it, and the taste of something that fresh and that honest was almost overwhelming in the best possible way.
We moved through the orchard together, my community, my friends, the people who have become my family in this country that is not the one I was born in. There was laughter between the trees, the easy laughter of people who are completely comfortable with one another. There were photographs taken among the branches, cherries held up to the light, faces bright with the particular happiness of a day that is asking nothing difficult of anyone. And underneath all of it was something I feel every time I am with this community, a warmth and a belonging that I did not know I would find when I first became a member of the Voice of Domestic Workers but that I now cannot imagine being without.
This community has become my family away from home. That is not a phrase I use lightly. Family away from home means the people who show up when the loneliness of living far from everyone you grew up with becomes too heavy to carry alone. It means the people who celebrate your small victories and sit with you through your difficult days and pile onto a coach with you on a Saturday morning to go and pick cherries in Kent. It means the people who remind you, without needing to say it directly, that you are seen and valued and not alone in any of this.
That sense of being seen and valued is at the heart of everything the Voice of Domestic Workers fights for. The right to change employer without restriction is part of that fight because no domestic worker should ever feel that their only option is to remain in a situation that diminishes them. The connection and community built within the VODW is only fully accessible when workers are free, free to move, free to choose, free to show up at an orchard on a July morning without the shadow of an impossible situation following them there.
The first fresh cherry I ever ate came from a tree I picked it from myself, and it tasted like summer and freedom and everything that is good about being alive and present in a moment. But that kind of presence, that ability to be fully in a joyful moment without anxiety pulling you backward, is something that requires a foundation of security beneath it. The right to renew the Overseas Domestic Worker Visa is part of building that foundation. It means that the life being lived here, the friendships being formed and the memories being made and the community being built, does not have to be constantly braced against the possibility of an abrupt and forced ending. Renewal means continuity. It means that the cherry trees at Felderland can be something to return to, not just something to say goodbye to.
I thought about sacrifice as I walked between the rows of trees that afternoon. About what it means to leave your home and your family and the landscape of your childhood to build something in a place that initially holds nothing familiar. Every domestic worker knows that sacrifice intimately. It lives in the phone calls home that are never quite long enough, in the milestones missed and the seasons changed and the quiet accumulation of years spent giving to others. But sacrifice without purpose becomes unbearable. What makes it bearable, what makes it meaningful, is the belief that it is leading somewhere.
That the years of hard work and separation and quiet endurance are building toward something real and lasting. The right to settlement is the fulfilment of that belief. It is the point at which sacrifice becomes investment, when the years already given are recognised as counting toward something permanent and secure in the country that has received them.
And the right to British citizenship is the horizon that makes the whole journey worth making. It is the destination that says all of it, every sacrifice, every early morning, every milestone endured from a distance, was leading here. To belonging. To being officially and permanently part of the country that domestic workers have quietly held together for so many years. Citizenship does not erase the sacrifice. But it honours it in the deepest and most lasting way possible.
I am Rolyn Oyanib, and I am a domestic worker and a proud member of the Voice of Domestic Workers. On the fifth of July I stood in an orchard in Kent and ate a cherry I had picked with my own hands and felt, with absolute clarity, that every sacrifice I have made has a purpose. That the life I am building here is real and worthy and worth fighting for. And that the community standing beside me in that orchard is one of the greatest gifts this journey has given me.
To my VODW family, thank you. For the cherries, for the laughter, for the belonging, and for never letting any of us forget that we deserve sweetness too.
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