The Filipino Diaspora and the Global Nomads

My non-Filipino friends turn green with envy when I pack up and go to visit friends or relatives in different parts of the world. They are surprised at how widespread my connections are.

That’s because the Filipino diaspora has created a global network of pads to crash in for my friends and me when we travel. There is always someone to offer us a bed in a house or apartment in many cities and villages in the world.

Filipinos are known for their hospitality so families and friends, and sometimes even friends of friends, are always welcome, especially in places where there are few fellow Filipinos and, consequently, no Filipino stores and karaoke bars to link them to their culture and each other. How often do they find someone to sing "My Way" and share home-cooked food with?

Our visits to Filipino homes abroad have introduced us to different versions of the sinigang and the adobo. The sinigang in a village outside of Stockholm was soured by rhubarb. The adobo in the countryside of France was simmered in wine vinegar. Even the fruit salad in Belgium was different in that it had cream cheese instead of Nestle cream and was sweetened with honey. My friends have had kare-kare with lamb as the main ingredient in the Middle East, rabbit adobo in the Netherlands and dinuguan made with boudin noire (blood sausage)elsewhere in Europe. Very recently, I ate a high cholesterol dish of pasta with taba ng talanka sauce at a potluck dinner in Miami that inspired me to make a pasta sauce of bottled gourmet tuyo back in Toronto.

Guests are also introduced to friends. It’s an occasion for a potluck party with everyone showing off his and her adaptive culinary skills and signature dishes. Men who in the Philippines would never have ventured in the kitchen prove that they can cook and enjoy it too. I am always impressed.

At the potluck party, a plan is often hatched to visit a popular tourist spot. Come the weekend, a caravan of Filipino-owned vans venture out, packed beyond the limits with family members and enough food for a survival reality TV episode.

In London where I visited my kumare Marites while she was a scholar at the London School of Economics, we rented a van to go to the Lake District, stopping by Nottingham,where Robin Hood’s legend started, for our first picnic-style meal, then spending the night at a bed and breakfast in York, the border with Scotland. We were with Marites’s husband, Vet, and son, Alab, and a Filipino couple.

On my last night in the English capital, I hosted dinner. Vet and Marites brought me to the wet market very early in the morning and we bought newly-butchered meat and fresh seafood, vegetables and fruits. I tried to cook something Canadian but was at a loss. So on my next trip to Los Angeles and San Francisco, I brought smoked salmon and maple syrup and cooked dinner for my friends in exchange for their hospitality.

A trip to Paris was supposed to be a reunion of UP-Mass Comm graduates in 1999. It was Mario’s idea to hold it in Paris and Lek, the city resident, followed up on it. But after all the e-mailing, only Tess and I made it. We stayed in the vacant studio apartment of Lek’s in-laws, close to the Basilica De Sacre Couer, but she insisted that we go down (halfway down the hill) to their apartment for breakfast every day. This was where I had the best croissants and pain du chocolat. Lek bought them from a bakery below Montmarte every morning.

It wasn’t our first time in the romantic city of lights. Tess lived in Europe in the 80’s because her husband, Philip, was stationed in the NATO headquarters in Belgium. When I went on a European tour by rail, I was able to visit them there. So the trip to Paris almost twenty years later was also an opportunity to reconnect with our other friends. Tess had dreamed of this time when she could travel again with her friends, free of the kids. From Paris, Tess took the train to Brussels to see her Belgian friends while I took another to Switzerland to see my former officemates Lulu and Wennie. I met Lulu in Geneva where she worked. After work, Lulu and I drove back to France where she lives with her husband in a village close to the border. Her Danish husband, a nuclear physicist, works for a nuclear plant located in that village. They had bought land from a farmer and constructed a modern cottage on it. Inside, the house looked like an IKEA store, full of Scandinavian-style furniture and small appliances that they had brought from Denmark. On my first night there was a potluck party at their house and someone had brought a rustic rabbit stew. The next night I requested Lulu to let me try raclette. She had the grill so we had it at home.

I saw Tess again in San Diego when I went to the Grand Canyon. My other California friends, Mario, Gemma and Efren drove to San Diego on a weekend, had breakfast with us at Tess’ house and then we went to Baja California for steak and lobster and some shopping. But we got lost and went in and out of the highways, paying toll every time. It was also raining hard. Mario’s cute idea of drinking wine on the beach was crashed. I ended up bringing the vintage wine from the oldest winery in Mexico all the way home to Toronto as a souvenir.

Another time I went to Maryland to see another friend, Nini. We rendezvoused with our common friend Laura at her World Trade Organization office in Washington. We also had a tour of the Canadian Embassy courtesy of Connie and her husband Luc before driving to Virginia for dinner at their home. I shouldn’t forget to mention that I made a mistake of flying to Baltimore at midnight, not knowing how far the airport was from Nini’s house, so I had to spend the night somewhere. Pura to the rescue --- her sister worked as a nurse at Johns Hopkins and had an apartment at the harbourfront. Ipin (for Josephine) even gave me a brief tour of Baltimore in the morning. We went to the fresh market and bought lunch there.

I stayed with Nini for two nights. From Washington, I took the train to New York. My friends, Mon and Tere, and their daughter, Bambam, met me at the station, took me to dinner, then brought me home for the night. The next day, I took the subway to Manhattan with Mon on his way to work and met my friend Ada at the Strands Bookstore on Broadway where I always load up on discounted books. Ada and I went to our friend Amy’s restaurant "Cendrillon" at Greenwich Village. We chatted the whole day and never left the place until I was scheduled to fly back to Toronto. Amy and her husband Rene sat with us at our table and relived our days at university.

An invitation to Hawaii still stands from our friend Ariela.

Many of my travel friends have left the Philippines for good or for better. Like me, they have become part of the Filipino diaspora. Some of them have settled comfortably outside the Philippines. Others are still in a state of transition and indecision.

The diaspora continues to spread. Other places await the global nomads.