It’s 2:30 in the morning, and I’ve just come from the Namfrel Davao computer center, which I’ve been managing for three days now. So far we’ve been able to encode and transmit election returns from over 250 poll precincts — not a bad feat, considering we only have less than 10 volunteers at any given time. Most of the volunteers are assigned in the field and in headquarters. Davao has more than 3,000 precincts, by the way.

I’m proud of the computer encoders I’ve been working with. There’s Rowena, who always volunteers with Namfrel, each time we hold elections. There were four students from AMA Computer College last Tuesday; and accountants from PICPA chipped in their time and energy as well. Wednesday early evening till the wee hours I had nine students from John Paul II College. This last batch was very impressive — they finished in one sitting more than half of the total output so far! Credit goes to Lawrence, the center’s appointed systems administrator, who rounded up these guys for us.

Doesn’t mean, though, that the other volunteers were slow. Fact is, we had a rather hard start. First of all, the software from Namfrel that we were supposed to use was, well, useless. That hiccup cost us almost a whole day of precious time. Truth is, Namfrel’s original setup in Davao had a major glitch and so was not organized at all. Which resulted in the withdrawal of the usual supporters of Namfrel, namely Ateneo de Davao and the Davao Diocese.

Only five days before the national elections, LENTE chairman, Ed Nuque, came to Davao with his usual gung-ho drive to try and salvage the situation. He asked me for help in looking for computers, so I referred him to Atoy Bangayan of NetXpress. Atoy immediately volunteered to put together a separate facility for us with 10 computers, Internet connection, oh and airconditioning! All for free! He even loaned us his technicians for awhile during the first two days.

And then Nuque approached my father, Momong (who’s his classmate in high school) to ask him to be the Namfrel chairman for Davao. He accepted the challenge, knowing full well he faced embarrassment and possible ridicule by the media, should the Davao quick count fail.

But Pop said, it would be much more of an embarrassment for the whole of Davao if no citizens’ quick count were held at all. My spirit of volunteerism, I got from Pop.

When I was living in Quezon City, I’d volunteered in efforts to provide assistance to victims of typhoons, earthquakes, and one unforgettable volcanic explosion. And around me were many, many volunteers. But when I came back to Davao, it was difficult to find that fire of volunteerism that I’d witnessed among Manileños.

(I have a theory on this. Davao is blessed with year-round good weather, land that will let anything grow, etc., that her people have grown rather complacent. Hmmm… this might be good for a whole new series of blog posts!)

But it isn’t absent here. The relatively few volunteers here, you’d see the fire in their eyes too. There is the willingness to somehow contribute to the betterment of society. They joke around that they were there for the free food — but that’s just how a lot of Filipinos are, we don’t like declaring our passions. We just do it.

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