A Filipino domestic worker in Saudi Arabia who relied on online gaming to cope with homesickness also managed to find a husband on the other side of the world.
Samra Mohamad, 23, who hails from Maguindanao in the Philippines, said RPGs or Role Playing Games were her only form of escape in dealing with homesickness and an abusive employer, GMA News reported.
Mohamad said she endured beatings as well as daily scoldings and regular insults from her employers. She said that playing online games helped her to cope with the stresses of living and working in Saudi Arabia.
In June 2017, Mohamad met Triston Wallin., an American professional gamer from Las Vegas, US, through one of the online games she regularly played. Wallin said he had no plans on courting Mohamad, but after they exchanged messages, he fell in love with her.
After a month of talking and making video calls, they became a couple, albeit one separated by more than 8,000 miles. During a video call in September last year, Wallin proposed marriage and Mohamad said yes.
They finally met face-to-face in December in the Philippines, where they got married. In order to do so, Wallin converted to the Islamic faith as Muslims cannot marry people of another faith.
The couple are currently residing in Mohamad’s home in the Philippines, but Wallin is planning to fly back to the US so that he can arrange for his wife to gain permanent residency there and join him.
Below: a Tagalog-language video feature tells their story.
