Earth Day will be celebrated on April 22, and I can’t help but remember my good friend Maria Luisa “Malu” Largo who left this earth in July 13, 2013 to plant more trees in heaven.
Between 2011 to 2013, I was part of a team that implemented a program called Strategic Corporate-Community Partnership for Local Development (Scope), a livelihood initiative of the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) and the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP).
I worked with German development workers but was stationed in PBSP Visayas Regional Office in Cebu, so I established great friendships and relationships with the PBSP staff who to this day are my closest and most valued peers.
One of them was Malu.
Malu toiled long and hard to protect the Cebu hilly lands. She made that possible by crafting projects that moved individuals and companies to grow trees at the Central Cebu Protected Landscape (CCPL), which spans more than 29,000 hectares of forest reserves and watersheds covering nine cities and towns in Cebu.
She crafted, monitored and evaluated projects on environmental governance, water education and river basin management. She was PBSP’s environment coordinator for the Visayas when she passed away from complications brought about by uterine cancer.
We had a tree-growing tribute for Malu two weeks after she left this earth, and we planted 2,500 trees for her in the mountains of Pung-ol Sibugay. It was raining, and we traversed muddy roads and slopes and crossed bamboo bridges.
It was barely a month since I got out of the hospital after giving birth to the twins, but I wanted to be there to honor a person whose work for the environment was never publicized. She was always upbeat about the possible projects we can collaborate on. She was happy when she told me how we can mobilize the private sector to support the Buhisan Watershed.
She was grinning from ear to ear when she told me that the Veco Reforestation Project, with more than one million trees planted within an area of 540 hectares, has embarked on a scientific profiling of the flora and fauna in Cebu.
“Criiis!” she squealed from her table which was an arm’s reach from mine. “The profiling report is back, and there are more than 60 species of indigenous trees in that area and there are more to track down… insects, reptiles, birds!”
When the birding community announced the existence of the Cebu hawk owl (Ninox rumseyi), I was with Malu and then PBSP Visayas director Jessie Cubijano to meet wildlife biologists Lisa Paguntalan and Godfrey Jakosalem to talk about how we can tell the world about this new discovery.
On the day we planted the 2,500 trees for her, we jointly read a piece called “Ode to Malu.” I wrote that piece without tears in my eyes. But as I read it at the time of this writing, it seemed like I opened Buhisan Dam.
Tears didn’t stop flowing as I repeatedly wished I joined the long walks she took in the mountains to monitor if the trees planted during reforestation caravans actually survived and thrived.
Malu was an economics graduate, cum laude, from the University of San Carlos. Married to Frank and mother to Frances and Gabrielle.
She was just as intelligent as she was passionate. She was my environmental compass who constantly reminded me to refrain from using plastics in my arts and crafts activity which follows after every storytelling session.
The months leading to her departure, where I was in a state of fatigue because of twin pregnancy, Malu found her healing gift and guided me through that difficult time.
You see, there are several people who parade themselves as environmentalists or lovers of Mother Earth. But none of them ever came close to the green warrior that was Malu.
You are forever remembered Iyaan. Sing to the mountains and the trees for all of us down here.