Durian and death

Saturday, I took the 4:30 am flight to Davao to speak at the Annual General Membership Assembly of DANECO, the Davao del Norte Electric Cooperative.

The site of the AGMA was in Montevista, Compostela Valley. We interrupted our two-hour drive when we reached Tagum City. My hosts wanted to show me what they think is the world’s biggest rosary, made of special hardwood whose name they can’t remember. “We wanted to register it with the Guinness Book of Records,” they told me, “but we found out that we have to pay 1000 dollars.”

I also got a quick briefing about DANECO at the Tagum office from Ed Savellano, the general manager, who started work in the electric cooperative as an ordinary employee. DANECO is one of three electric coops in the Davao provinces; the other two are DORECO which covers Davao Oriental and DASURECO which serves Davao del Sur.

DANECO covers two provinces – Compostela Valley with its 10 towns, and 9 towns of Davao del Norte, including the two cities of Tagum and Samal Island Garden City. The towns of Davao del Norte closest to Davao City, like Panabo and Carmen, are served by the Aboitiz-owned Davao Light and Power Company.

The briefing gave me a better sense of the complementary roles played by corporate electric distribution companies and electric coops. The Davao Light and Power Company serves the more lucrative areas, with a load of 250 megawatts, while the peak load of DANECO is only 57 MW.

DANECO was organized in 1971, and Ed showed me the very first electric pole they put up in the office compound. The story of missionary rural electrification which I appreciated in Northern Mindanao through MORESCO, is repeated in DANECO. In fact, they can be proud of achieving a target ahead of schedule. The national government set 2008 as the deadline for energizing all barangays. DANECO energized all 374 barangays in its area of responsibility by the end of 2006.

During my talk, I asked the assembly to remember when they had no electricity, and if they experienced changes for the better since electricity came to their communities and homes. I also asked them to think of the many other households who still don’t have their electricity. Part of the charges they pay goes to subsidize the extension of lines to remote areas.

The board president, Gerry Balana, told me that DANECO may be the EC that had to set up the longest lines, almost 5000 kilometers. And yet they have managed to connect only 125,000 households out of the potential 213,000. The rest are in even more remote sitios and puroks.

It is the electric coops that have the mandate to electrify the whole countryside. But doing so does not make immediate economic sense, since putting up a kilometer of electric line over sparsely populated areas can cost up to 1 million pesos. If only a few households are at the sitio, as in one case in Iloilo, the coop sells only 600 pesos worth of power a month. And its cost does not end with putting up the line. Meter readers and linesmen have to visit these areas from time to time.

No wonder, corporate electric companies don’t bother to extend lines to some parts of their franchise area. The northern border areas of Davao City had to be served by the EC of Bukidnon. The line to a barangay that is only 500 meters away from the new Davao airport had to be set up by DANECO, using national government subsidy, before linking it to Davao Light and Power.

At lunch, I sat beside Atty. Jess Albacite, one of the outgoing board members. He has served three terms for 9 years, and we reminisced about the early 70s when he was a human rights lawyer with FLAG. He is also a “gentleman-farmer” and brought frozen durian for our desert.

An incoming board member who is a doctor watched me eat the durian and asked me later, “Do you feel any dizziness?” I didn’t, and wondered why he asked.

He told the whole gathering, I guess because most of us looked old enough, that he has to caution those who have hypertension against eating durian. “Unless you are taking maintenance,” he said, “I don’t recommend eating durian. It is so nutritious that it can trigger a hypertensive attack.”

He added that almost every durian festival in Davao, he personally knows of three persons who die after eating durian.

Despite that sobering thought, I accepted the gracious offer of Atty. Jess to give me a couple of durian to take home to Girlie. But I immediately checked with her if she takes a maintenance for her incipient hypertension, and told her about the doctor’s cautionary advice.

Our daughter Ayen got back from a party with her classmates with a shocking news: “Did you know that Thor is dead?”

Thor is a young Dane who visited the Philippines through the study-exchange program of the LO-Vinterskole and the Education for Life Foundation. During the Danish part of the program, he hosted all the Danish and Filipino participants for dinner at his house.

He was not yet 20, and took the folk high school course, like other Danish youth, as a way to help him decide what course to take in the university.

Thor reminded me of young Filipinos in the 70s who were from well-off families, but who were politically curious and looking for meaningful commitment. During his stay in the Philippines, he bought a number of books including Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Ayen remembers that he was into political discussions most of the time, with little patience for small talk.

His politics was more “red” than “green.” I wonder where he would stand on the issue of nuclear power. In the 70s, Danish activists launched a successful campaign against the setting up of nuclear plants. Their success forced them to come up with alternatives, and that is part of the reason why Denmark is one of the leading producers of wind energy.

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