Workers of the world

REYKJAVIK – The man who lays claim to introducing Icelanders to Asian cuisine is a Filipino.

Justiniano "Ning" de Jesus is the proud owner of the popular Ning’s Chinese fast-food chain in this Icelandic capital. He also owns an Asian supermarket and has branched out to importing gourmet products.

On a typical day at Ning’s there is a steady stream of Icelanders pulling up in cars and SUVs to dine in or take out Chinese food with touches of Pinoy cuisine adopted to the Icelandic palate. Among the offerings: lamb in Ning’s special "dragon sauce" (something like oyster sauce) and deep-fried pork that looks and tastes like our very own lechon kawali. Last Tuesday night the branch near the Nordica Hotel was packed. I saw an Icelandic woman using chopsticks to eat noodles with plain rice.

Ning was 36 when he first came here in 1974 to follow an Icelandic woman – the first runner-up in the Miss Universe pageant that was held in Manila a few years earlier. The two met when the beauty contestants were billeted at the Hyatt hotel on Roxas Boulevard where Ning was the deputy night manager.

Ning, already married to a Filipina, was smitten. He lived with the beauty queen in this city and already had two children when they broke up. Ning and his Filipino wife stayed in Iceland, where he found a partner to help him start a business. He tried Asian fine dining before switching to Chinese fastfood, which became a hit.

Now 68, Ning is preparing to turn over his businesses to anyone among his five children who might be interested, and devote his time to his other passion, fishing – a sport for the rich in this part of the world.

If he misses the restaurant business, he might introduce Manila to Viking cuisine.

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Ning is not the only Pinoy I have encountered in recent weeks who has made good overseas.

In Bali at the start of this month, I ran into Jamil Maidan Flores, who accompanied Indonesia’s Foreign Minister N. Hassan Wirajuda as speechwriter during the two-day Global Inter-Media Dialogue. Jamil, a native of Ilocos Sur, was a journalist in Manila when he heard of a job opening in Indonesia’s foreign ministry about a decade ago. Since then he has worked in that country.

Bali residents also told me that their most popular local singer is a transplanted Filipina named Maribeth, whose biggest hit is called Denpasar Moon. The driver of my shuttle from the airport also told me that he listened every morning to Freddie Aguilar’s Anak, whose meaning is the same in Indonesia. Radio stations in that country play Filipino songs.

Jamil told me that most of the 5,000 Filipinos in Indonesia are professionals, many of them holding managerial positions in banking and finance.

Not so in Iceland, where success stories like Ning’s are the exception rather than the rule. There are less than 1,000 Filipinos here. Ning counts about 600; the chambermaid in our hotel counts 800, which probably includes illegals. The Filipinos congregate regularly at the three Catholic churches in this predominantly Lutheran country, the chambermaid, 39-year-old Merly Enriquez Eriksson told me.

The country can be too cold and life can be hard. But as the surname implies, Merly is now married to an Icelander, and she seems happy. They have two children – a girl, 10, and a one-year-old boy. After spending 16 years of her life here, she has no plans of returning to her native Cebu. She likes the flexible work schedule here, which allows her to work for a total of only 75 percent of the days in each month. Her monthly take-home pay is 90,000 Icelandic kroners – about $1,300. That’s not much in a country where the cost of living is one of the highest in the world.

Still, Merly looks happy. Her two sisters and brother are also here, with one, Geline, a chambermaid as well in the same hotel.

In neighboring Denmark, many of the 9,000 Filipinos are nannies from Cavite and Bohol, according to Marc Dicay, president of the Filipino organization called Bayanihan. He theorizes that when someone gets settled in a particular country, he or she starts bringing in relatives and townmates. Marc, who has retired from Scandinavian Airlines, is also in the food business and does not intend to return to his native land. The remains of his Filipino wife are buried in Copenhagen.

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We know how the Philippine diaspora is breaking up many families, and how it is leading to brain drain. But for now there’s not much we can do to stop Filipinos from pursuing their dream of finding a better life overseas for lack of better alternatives in their own country.

We can look on the bright side. With Filipinos finding jobs from Siberia (no kidding) to the farthest inhabitable tip of the southern hemisphere, with Filipino seamen on almost every international commercial vessel, our people must be developing a global perspective.

Immersion in other cultures can reduce the insularity of the typical Pinoy. Apart from sending home money that is fueling consumer spending and development, our workers are sending home ideas about better ways of doing things. They are seeing the benefits of clean and green environments, of transparency in government and the rule of law.

Eight million Filipinos – and counting – have turned the world into their workplace. There are sad stories of abuse, but also happy ones such as Ning’s. Something good has to emerge out of this diaspora.