OFW Journals (OFW Stories on the News) and Some OFW Employment, Career & Business Tips

Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Opiniano: A global search for Filipino heroes
By Jeremaiah M. Opiniano

DALY CITY, California, USA -- On the doorsteps of a simple yet elegant-looking apartment here were 30 pairs of shoes. True enough, 30 kids and parents all fit into that 40-square-meter home.

And what was it time for? Manny Pacquiao.

The attendees were mostly staff members of the Philippine Consulate here, and they even came from a Jollibee birthday bash of an officemate's one-year-old girl. The 6 pm party had to be abbreviated because it's "Pacman" time.

All were ready to watch the "Grand Finale" between Pacquiao and three-time world champion Erik Morales. The chips and nuts were ready on the center table. Some were standing, seating in the couch, and lying on the carpeted floor.

Sarah Geronimo sang the national anthem, and all the 30 people in that home stood up and placed their right hand on their heart as if they were in a flag ceremony back home in school. Even the Filipinos born here in the US stood up. They were serious about doing that.

Michael Buffer then did his trademark announcement of the protagonists, and his vocal bellowing of Pacquiao's name alone saw the people in that apartment howl.

Much more that they howled when Pacquiao floored Morales in the second rough with a right hook, and when Pacquiao's right jabs and hooks led to his powerful left straights to Morales' jaw in the two knockouts in the third round.

"We watched here also last time," said Consulate staff Eloy. Tthe night was not complete without the simple bounty of pansit, spicy chicken, cheese sticks, bibingka, leche flan, soda, and beer.

Filipinos back home and across the world were not disappointed: a hero brought pride to a beleaguered country. "Temporary happiness for us once again," said Vice Consul Arvic Arevalo.

For a developing country that is wanting of rays of hope for a promising future, Filipinos around the world -rich and poor, powerful and powerless- are looking for heroes. Not only because they can unite a nation through their triumphs, but because they are telling us a lesson.

We Filipinos can still arise and be alive once more.

Those messages are apt for us Filipinos. The Philippines has been searching for widespread progress in the daily toil of poverty, and has yet to find it. Filipinos are fed up with too much politicking and slow-moving socio-economic reforms, yet these instances continue despite two bloodless people power revolutions.

So, among the results of these Philippine realities are daily droves of departing Filipinos in our international airports. Pulse Asia's annual surveys have revealed the rising desire of Filipinos to think of overseas migration as the only way out: from 26 percent in 2004 to 30 percent this year.

That survey finding is also saying something else: there is growing hopelessness about Filipinos' future within the country. Says a migrant advocate: "Are we losing the ability to believe in ourselves?"

Thus, a nation has been looking for heroes. So the media has found delight and inspiration into "good news" such as a policeman back home who has returned a missing attaché case of cash. Meanwhile, government always calls a group of people "heroes" in today's modern times: these heroes are 7.924 million strong in 193 countries.

I spoke at the Philippine Consulate here in San Francisco about the country's future beside the exodus in the morning of the Pacquiao-Morales fight. So I asked some of the Filipinos there: "Are you a hero?" OFW Mutual Benefit Corporation president Nestor Duldulao wondered, and the lips reveal his puzzled response. Others cannot answer my question.

"I think I am a hero," said Vanessa Bonifacio, a computer programmer in Brunei Darussalam. Bonifacio's point of reference is the work of her relatives who worked abroad and who funded her schooling. While work is hard in Brunei, she wants to do the same and for fellow Filipinos. Her own contribution is a website for overseas Filipinos called OFW Connect (www.ofw-connect.com), and the pictures of Filipinos from multiple countries are aplenty.

While Filipinos abroad are puzzled at being called "modern-day heroes," they are also searching for heroes. Here in the US, some 2.3 million Filipinos are happy whenever a Filipino or Filipino-American was appointed as official in a certain city, got elected for public office, is chef for President George W. Bush, and many more.

In other countries, we would hear stories such as the only Filipino lawyer in an unknown area in the United Kingdom; the Filipina who is among the top directors of Nokia headquarters in Finland; the Filipina who maintains a salon in an atoll in Maldives (south of India), and the daughter of a Filipino-Dutch couple who is now Ms. Netherlands and will compete in the Ms. World Beauty pageant.

For a country that's besieged both at home and in other countries, these stories of hope hype us and make us feel good as a race and as a nation. The only thing missing is how we translate that hope into a new Philippines. We hope to see a Philippines that's slowly becoming a robust economy to perfectly complement the hard work and endurance of her citizens. That will make us Filipinos, already among the happiest people in the world despite poverty, happier.

A Filipino race that's distributed worldwide wants more hope in the seemingly rising tide of Filipino hopelessness that overseas migration breeds. But we do not need wait for another Pacquiao victory to feel that Filipino hope.

We can breed more hope ourselves, wherever we are. That's what Manny and others have been telling us all the time.

Comments are welcome at ofw_philanthropy@yahoo.com.

(Jeremaiah M. Opiniano of the Institute for Migration and Development Issues (www.filipinodiaspoiragiving.org) is in San Francisco, USA as a Yuchengco Media Fellow at the University of San Francisco-Center for the Pacific Rim. He is representing the OFW Journalism Consortium (www.ofwjournalism.net) during a three-month media fellowship that is focused on writing about overseas Filipinos.)