Making it Work

from the inside out a prague nail salon

From the time Monika Ngo entered high school, she knew she would one day live in Prague.

Growing up in Haiphong, the third largest city in Vietnam,  her Aunt Quyen used to brag to Monkia’s mother about the new trendy clothes, steady stream of money and pictures her husband would mail back to her of his life, house, and new nail salon in Prague.

“You can earn more in a day there, then you can in a life here”, Monika remembers her Mother’s other sister telling her mother in an effort to persuade Monika’s own father to move to the Czech Republic. But, 5 years ago, when Monika was 16 and her father decided not to leave and join his brothers, Monika knew it would be her who would someday make it to this “Better city”.

Monika is just one of many Vietnamese who emigrated to Prague before the global economic crisis, in hopes of making more money and a better life in the Central European cultural and political capital.   Monika, in particular, came to study economics.“Prague has opportunities for economists and business Vietnam doesn’t” She says.

“I want to work in business or work as an economist. Europe is much better for economists than Vietnam and the Czech Republic is welcoming to us” She adds.Monika’s experience as a Vietnamese in Prague has its advantages and disadvantages. Since she is able to live with her extended family and other Vietnamese, she says she “rarely gets homesick”. Also, while on trams and metros she says she “is always seen as Vietnamese”, she has never felt that her race has made her vulnerable.

However, one time when Monkia was shopping in a Prague’s Tesco department store,  she says that a  man came up to her and asked her, in Czech, why she didn’t shop at a Vietnamese store instead.

“Sometimes I think people want to stay apart from each other. But Czechs shop in our stores, and we shop in theirs.” She says/.

Beginning in the 1990s, the Vietnamese immigrant population in Prague has blossomed to a sizeable community of just over 60,000.  The Vietnamese have also since seized a firm grasp on the corner grocery and nail salon markets as well as a representative seat in the city's National Minority Council.

However, with the economic downturn, racial differences, and the realities of earning money for both herself and her family back home, Monika, like many others in this economy, is struggling with the daily reality of living in a perhaps falsely promised land.Wearing black pants, and a white T-shirt, with her dark hair cut just above her shoulders, and while fidgeting with the leather band and thin gold buckle of small wristwatch, Monika’s waits behind a glittering cosmetic counter in her uncle’s salon. Her understanding of Vietnamese, Czech and English make her an asset to the Salon and its customers.

“I studied so I could move.” She recalls regarding her acceptance to Hanoi’s University of Agriculture and her subsequent acceptance into the school’s abroad program at the Czech University of Agriculture in Prague two years later.

“Some students at my school asked me why lots of Vietnamese come to the Czech Republic. When I tell them to make money. They laugh at me because in their mind Asia is where you make money. But then they come to our nail salons and our grocers anyway. And I tell them that’s how we are able to make money” She states with a grin.

“The Vietnamese are skilled and smart. We work hard.”  Monkia says.

“I want to go home to visit, but after I get a degree and more money” Says Monika. Yet she seems “unsure” of whether she would like that visit to be a permanent return, or just a temporary visit to Vietnam.

When asked about her specific future plans as an economist and businesswomen, she says “I don’t think that much about exact plans about later. I have work and school now.”

Looking at her watch and taping her pencil rhythmically on a calculator behind a cosmetic counter, she adds “I don’t have time to.”