If you would use any search engines on the net and type DASURECO, it is but a sad sight that it can be found along with the tag words “corruption” and the like. I am not writing this blog to save the face of the company I’ve worked for and have come to love through the years. My company remained mum about all the controversies and I feel it is not necessary for me to do otherwise. I still believe that the truth shall set us free someday.

But the following lines from my favorite essay “To the Young Writer” by F. Sionil’s Jose kept haunting me for days:

“Be an honest witness to your time, and be strong when they revile you for telling the truth. Your vocation will also condemn you to solitude, but remember — he who stands alone is the strongest. Even in your shattering loneliness, remember you are writing not for critics, academics, or other writers, but for your own people who, in their silence and perhaps poverty, cannot express their aspirations and anguish. You are their voice but only if you have not deserted or betrayed them.”

Almost nine years ago, after my college graduation from UP, I dreaded returning to my hometown and be stuck here for the rest of my life. I often dreamed of working and becoming successful in a faraway land and enjoying the independence and freedom that life away from home brings. If not for an advice given during graduation rites by a Professor we all look up to — that we go back to our places and serve the very people who sent us to school for being “Iskolars ng Bayan,” I would not be working at DASURECO. At the time I applied, I was even hesitant and even told myself that debt-servicing would only be for 5 years.

But time flew and I found myself appreciating the work and the causes of all electric cooperatives throughout the country. I have enjoyed working for these little coops which neither exist for themselves nor for profit. I relish the fact that I am with this group of people who have causes bigger than themselves, inflamed with the common vision of bringing the gift of light not only to those which are easy to light due to proximity but to families who need it most in the farthest part of the country. I feel quite lucky to have witnessed the teary-eyed folks in the barrios, during energization ceremonies, who in the days past, were only groping in the dark and were living in fear because of threats of theft, insurgencies, and the doings of the lawless.

I haven’t written about any of that in the past and I feel awful that I have not been quite an honest witness to my time in DASURECO. I feel that I deserted or betrayed the people who have not come to know these because of people like me who turned deaf ears and numb minds, who are too lazy to write.

“…Why then must you write at all? do it because there is so much hypocrisy and cussedness in us and, who knows, you may be able to exorcise a bit of these. Do it because many of us have lost our moorings, and it is in literature where history lives, where we can know best ourselves so that we can then live with ourselves and be rooted again in native soil. Do it because it is a vocation which will give you such pleasure, so lasting and so deep — it transcends anything those sybarites and sensualists covet. I assure you, this old man knows.”

The following are few pictures taken during DASURECO’s Pinaskuhan Drive last December. Though it is but tradition and practice of DASURECO to go the extra mile during Christmases and anniversaries, I got so engrossed with last December’s project because I, together with Ate Ann and Kuya Max, personally helped in scouting the beneficiaries (40 families) to ascertain their worthiness of the gifts which all DASURECO employees personally contributed. The scheme was we let a group of 5 employees adopt one family. There was about 40 families who went to DASURECO that day to hear mass and share lunch with us. The standards? The beneficiary family must have no electricity account, no cellular phones, or any thing considered a luxury. Hmm….isn’t that going the extra extra mile? An electric coop helping families without electricity? Well, who says we can only give to those who can give us something back? As an old adage says, “You have not lived a perfect day, even though you have earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”