CHRIS Bech and Theresa Navalta upend the stereotype of foreigners marrying docile Pinays. Far from bring hesitant and deferential, Theresa, 36, is direct and assertive. She moves quickly and with purpose. She is not the happy conversationalist her husband is but when she speaks, she ventures strong opinions. More telling, she was in her thirties, sold heavy industrial equipment and was financially independent when she met Chris, a Norwegian in the furniture business.

Add to that, “he courted for one year,” Theresa says. It still strikes her as unbelievable that Chris would even dare pick her up from her office in his motorcycle. “My officemates were kind of joking, ‘Oh, there’s your foreigner, he’s only in a motorbike and you have a car!’”

For his part, Chris, the strapping Viking, had fallen for Theresa for precisely the reasons she projects in real life. “She’s extremely honest and extremely correct,” he says.

Chris was 45 when he met Theresa five years ago. He had never been married before but lived with a few partners. Theresa, he agrees, was special. “I felt it was correct and we married.”

As important to Chris was the fact that Theresa “gives good support in all the situations you meet in life.”

And this is their current situation: for the past two years, the Bechs have lived in a windswept beachfront house in Bobon, Northern Samar, a tiny town that’s ten minutes away from the slightly less sleepy capital of Catarman.

Although they live with four dogs, two cats, one monkey and maybe three or four household staff, and the neighbors, though unseen, are just a few dozen meters away, there’s a forlorn and slightly isolated quality to the place.

Which is exactly what the Bechs had in mind when they first bought the extended stretch of land along the breathtaking expanse of the Philippine Sea.

Paradise revealed

In 2002, Chris was invited by his partners to stay in Bobon during the Holy Week. “When I came down here, I said, ‘This is fantastic. This is paradise.’” His hosts were mystified by his zeal. “No, no, no, this is nothing,” Chris recalls them saying. “I said this beach is wonderful. They said, ‘No, no, no, nobody uses this!’”

Amazed that only he could see the potential of the place, he bought the property from the mayor. He built a rest house and planned to make Bobon his getaway during weekends. Soon, the Bechs found themselves spending more time in their rest house. They eventually decided to make Bobon their more permanent home and fly back to their condominium in Quezon City once or twice a month. “I don’t like polluted Manila,” Chris says.

With so much unspoiled beauty at their disposal, that’s what the Bechs finally did – market their property to retirees or to foreign nationals with Filipino spouses.

And they’ve attracted quite a number. Posting on the website Island Properties (www.islandproperties.com under Beachfront Properties in Northern Samar), the Bechs now host what a story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer called a “U.N. Village.” In the blurb to his page, Chris calls them “a good, positive group of nice people from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Korea, (the) Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Qatar, Romania, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan and U.S.A.” We met a retired English bobby who married a retired Filipina policewoman, and an American surfer dude who was floored by Bobon and decided it was a better deal than his current digs in Maui, Hawaii. He plans to marry his fiancee from Ormoc, Leyte and become a transplanted Samareño.

The Bechs have opted not to sell their property in fixed lots, allowing individual buyers their choice of size and location. A Filipino buyer from Cebu opted for a 250 square meter lot surrounded by coconut trees at the back of the Bech property. There, she built a compact nipa rest house. A few others have gone grand, including a buyer from California who was building athree-level Mediterranean-style villa on his beachfront lot. From the villa’s second floor terrace, one has a magnificent view of the surf and the adjacent river almost touching in an arc.

Yin and yang

According to the website, the Bechs sell their property at $9 per square meter. The electric cables are installed underground and they see to the continuous supply of fresh water. In addition, they offer an additional service – supervising the construction of homes for those who can’t personally be on hand to do it.

While Chris sources materials and hires laborers, Theresa takes care of receiving, disbursing and meticulously recording the thousands of dollars their buyers send to have their homes constructed. The job is no joke, Theresa says, because it often means her integrity is on the line. It helps, she adds, that she’s a “control freak.”

Which is something Chris is thankful for because his yin is balanced by Theresa’s yang.She reins in his enthusiasm, he admits.

Theresa Bech is no stranger to taking care of the business end of things. At age 14, she emancipated herself. Taking her parents’ dictum to heart to “get out of the house” if she couldn’t abide by its rules, she moved from Manila to Davao to live with an aunt. Later, she opted to live on her own, renting bedspace as she put herself through high school.

"I was working as a waitress in the afternoon until 10 in the evening. And on weekends, until 3 in the morning.” On weekends, she accepted tutoring jobs. Her friends were saviors as well; one offered to pay for her bedspace. She ate her meals at the restaurant. “So all of my earnings and my tips went to my schooling.”

College was even more of a struggle. She first took up Mass Communication before shifting to Med Tech. Because she couldn’t afford to complete the course, she began working. She impressed her bosses but they couldn’t promote her to a managerial position because she was an undergraduate. They, however, weren’t willing to lose out on a potential star so they allowed her off early so she could return to school and get her degree.

"So I took up Computer Science… (and) graduated that with flying colors. I graduated in AMA in Manila.”

Naturally independent,
naturally generous

When she met Chris, she was 33 and already her own person. She drove her own car and rented her own apartment. After a year of courtship, during which time Theresa carefully observed the character and values of Chris, she allowed him to move into her apartment. Even then, Theresa laid down the rules. As a guest, Chris was not allowed to spend on anything for the house. The household expenses were her responsibility. Even after they got married, Theresa continued to work on two more jobs before Chris eventually persuaded her to help him with his furniture business.

It must have been tough for the Viking who Theresa describes as naturally generous. “He can’t help it but he will really give out to people,” she says. “And that’s what I really like about him. He’s not into material things but he knows he can build something up but he will share it.”

We saw it firsthand during a trip to nearby Capul Island where Chris threw P20 bills to delighted children perched on our small boat. They jumped to catch the bills and swam to where the money floated on the water. Chris also spent to fix the house of a a neighbor who lived down the road. He also gave her a TV, installed cable, and regularly slips purple (P1000) notes to the old lady.

It is this expansiveness and generosity of spirit that makes Chris the perfect if unofficial drumbeater for tourism in Northern Samar. Like most of the transplanted, Chris has seen more of the wonders of the province than many native Samareños. A local newspaper reporter credits Chris for introducing her to the breathtaking historical sites of nearby Capul Island, a way station for galleons during Spanish times and on which the church of Capul, built in 1616, still stands.

He has organized resort owners into a tourism board in order to raise hospitality standards. He needles the local electric company to provide better and more stable service. And he hosts journalists and assorted visitors who come to Northern Samar expecting little but leave full to bursting with Northern Samar’s sweeping sights.

As for Theresa, she is happy in seeming isolation.

"I’ve had enough of the nightlife,” Theresa says about urban attractions. To her, Bobon is home, where the openness and friendliness of the people are the charms that keep her rooted in a place that looks sleepy and inaccessible to outsiders.

But not for long, if the Bechs’ hard work is any indication. They’re only too willing to share their private paradise to comers who, like them, will respect and maintain the rugged beauty that lured them there in the first place.