Crossings
Woke up early this morning to catch the 5:30 am fastcraft from Toledo City on Cebu island to San Carlos City on Negros island. I left the workshop of the electric coop GMs to speak at a workshop on biotech co-sponsored by the MDC, or Mayors’ Development Center.
Unfortunately, the fastcraft’s trip got cancelled. I had to wait for the slow boat at 7:30 am which took one and a half hour to cross the sea from Cebu to Negros. That gave me time to eat breakfast with the early risers, who told stories about the early years of rural electrification, how even some NPA would join the ceremonies of energizing new town centers.
VRESCO, one of the first three electric coops organized in the 70s, kindly arranged for a car to fetch me at the San Carlos pier. The driver took a side trip to their area office; he said the commercial compound where the coop rented its office is owned by Assunta de Rossi’s husband. Strange connection; yesterday, I was told that Jules Ledesma was one of the congressmen knowledgeable about the power sector.
The road trip to Dumaguete City took more than three hours. It’s the first time I travelled that scenic sea side road. But what struck me more were the countless sugar haciendas on the other side of the highway; they seemed to stretch to the foot of the mountains.
Later at dinner, the provincial agricultural officer said he would prefer that there was not that much sugar in the Negros Oriental. “Why?” asked Mayor Festin of San Jose Occidental Mindoro. “Because sugar plantations create a social structure that has a very big gap between a few rich on top and lots of poor people below.”
The mayor from Mindoro agreed. “We used to have large sugar plantations in San Jose. But they eventually became rice lands, and were redistributed under the CARP. Our farmers are better off now.”
Tomorrow I need to return to the GM’s workshop in Cebu, for the action planning session on how to navigate the crossing from the situation before EPIRA to after.
The electric coops are under pressure from GMA to fast track the reduction of their systems loss. The CDA and some LGUs want to fast track their registration with the CDA. Bills have been filed in the Senate and in Congress to fast track the operations of the WESM. New corporations have been set up to fast track the take over of the more viable ECs.
At the biotech workshop, there was useful discussion about the hopes and fears concerning biotech. These tend to revolve around GMOs or genetically modified organisms which many wrongly equate with biotech. The resource person from DA clarified that while all GMOs are the result of biotech, biotech covers a wider range of processes and products other than GMOs. In fact the DA biotech roadmap is focusing on biotech applications for the “natural ingredients” industry.
There was also keen interest in the news that there is a global demand for malunggay extracts, achuete, and similar nutrients and natural coloring. Mayor Calderon of the MDC said that in addition to helping mayors develop their tourism potentials, they can help in applying the OTOP ”one town one product” concept to biotech.
Dumaguete City is a university city, and Silliman University is a center for biodiversity conservation, especially of marine protected areas. If Dumaguete would choose to call itself a ”learning city,” I think it would meet most of the standards that are being developed globally.
While thinking of learning cities and related lifelong learning topics from my recent trip to Korea, I got a number of texts from Girlie who was in Lucena City to do interviews for her research into migration and development. She said that she had also opened discussions with friends at Enverga Univesity, especially with Benilda, on making Lucena a “lifelong learning city,”
On my last day In Korea, I introduced myself to Peter Jarvis from the UK and told him that I liked what he wrote in an anthology on lifelong learning I got in Denmark. He had written that we could think of lifelong learning as an obvious fact, equivalent to simply being consciously alive.
But we could also consider lifelong learning as the challenge we face at those moments of our life, when our “biography” can not make sense of life situations and ideas that we encounter. We feel a sense of disjuncture, and we struggle to adjust or expand our existing understanding of life, which he calls our “biography.” Learning happens when we are able to do this, and it brings a sense of relief, even joy.
A Brazilian educator describes the learning experience as akin to “ecstasy.” But only after we have successfully made the crossing from initial confusion and discomfiture.
