The jungle survival course -- part 2

Day 2

We get woken by the sound of a rifle/loud firecracker going off at about 7.30am. We eat and pack and are given our first lesson at the stream nearby -- how to sharpen a parang. After that we are ferried to the start of the trail which is this beautiful spot in fairly dense jungle. We start hiking for a bit and then we stop and have lesson 2 -- how to use a parang. We are then split into pairs and tasked with felling a small tree (about 6 inches in diameter) and cutting up a section about a meter and a half long. So off we go and pick a tree. This is my favourite bit of course since I get to play with the parang. Woohoo! Chop. Chop. Chop. I really get into rhythm and enjoy it lots. In no time, it is done and I have my section. The guide tells me to carry it to the main area and so I do. Then the second job is to fell a larger tree -- about 12 inches in diameter or so -- as a team working in rotation. It becomes evident who has spent time playing with knives in their childhood but it was really interesting because just observing the different ways in which people try to work out the mechanics of swinging a 12 inch blade was enlightening. I really admired Thushan's technique. He is already an imposing man but what I really appreciated was the sheer economy of his swings; just enough wrist flick at the end and a very smooth action all the way through. Not an ounce of wasted strength. Then we are asked to cut a hiking staff for ourselves; just under shoulder height. I normally hate hiking staffs -- I think they are just extra weight to lug around and are a nightmare when you are in a tight spot with creepers. Well, I do as told anyway, waiting to see if I might be persuaded otherwise over the course of the trip -- you'll see where they are useful on the last day.

Well, the next job. We need to go look for vines to use as rope. The interesting thing was that the instructors told us to look for roots as well. And I wonder how I could have been an idiot for so long in not considering roots as a good source of rope!!! I had been having tunnel vision for so long about this it's amazing. I was used to the idea of vines and creepers as rope, I knew about braiding cores of plants for ropes but I forgot about roots!! Man, I'm really getting daft! So ok, vines. I pull down loads of vines and we are asked to stop when we have enough. And being the philosophers that we are, we ask, "ermm ... define enough." Anyway, I've overdone it. I have shitloads of vines but never mind, I strap them on the pack and away we go to our next station.

We hike at a decent pace and unfortunately the very high humidity and my own body heat (as usual) leads to a major fogging situation with my ballistic spectacles. I am almost blinded by the condensation on my lenses. I remind myself that I need to get an anti-fogging treatment for my next pair of ballistic goggles. But somehow I manage until there is time to stop so that I can change into my regular spectacles which cope better with the fogging but offer less protection to my eyes.

We stop soon and the instructor takes us to a clump of what look like a variety of tree ferns. He tells us to look carefully at how another instructor strips the plant. We are trying to get at the soft inner core of the plant just under where the new leaves are growing. That small section is edible. So we get sent out to harvest 3 shoots per person. It is ok work -- just a regular clean up operation. I make a mistake with my first shoot and look for it on the wrong side of the plant at the roots instead of the leaves. But after that, it is fairly smooth going. We wrap the shoots up in leaves of the plants we have harvested and tie it with some of our "rope" to our packs and we are off again.

We trek for a bit more and land up at a bamboo clump. It is now around noon. The skies have opened up by now and we are wet. We dump our packs under a tree with lovely large leaves that provide us with some shelter. But our instructors move on to the next task -- how to cut bamboo without splitting it. The key is patience; as with most things in the jungle/bush. You need to go slowly and without too much force. Just persistently and gently chip away at the bamboo. Do not place any undue stress at any section. Just so you know, these are not the small "Teck-ko" bamboos that we use in Singapore to hang out our clothes. These are the really huge variety with a diameter of about 5-6 inches (rather than 1 inch) and each segment is about 30 inches long. So anyway, we are asked to cut out a section with extra space at the ends. That is going to be our water bottle for the rest of the trip.

Oh stop!! This is also where I get my first leech!! I found this ugly brown stain on my hand that just wouldn't go away. Of course looking through my fog-laden spectacles, it just looks like a stubborn bit of dirt, then I finger it and find it really squishy and realise that it's a leech. It's been there for a bit, judging from the size. So I spend a bit of time trying to pull it off. Man, they are tough little suckers (pun intended!!) When I finally get it off, the blood just happily streams down my hand without stopping. Oops. I'm scared of blood remember? And I also tend to feel faint when I see it. Strangely though, when I am in the jungle, this is never quite a problem for me in the same way it is in civilisation. Somehow, it doesn't feel like a violation of my body, it feels at home, in place. It belongs. And after staring at it for a bit wondering if I'm going to feel faint, I realise that it's going to be ok. And then I realise that my greatest fear in this trip is over: I was scared of not being able to cope with the bleeding from the leeches and potentially holding everyone up. Yes, I know, It's crazy. Of all the things I could have been scared about in the jungle, I was fucking scared of my own haemophobia and its consequences. I mean there were tigers and bears and snakes and falls etc. but was I scared of those things??!!?? Noooooooooo!!

It's funny when I think about it. I didn't and I don't fear the jungle. I'm cautious. I have no romantic illusions about nature as some of my more "city" friends do. Some of them laugh about what I carry in my car boot in Australia. But they are the people who will travel in the rural areas by taking shortcuts through dirt tracks in winter without extra water, no sleeping bags, no firestarters and no skills _with_ their children. I would hate for a storm to close up the road when they are on it or for an accident to happen and the car to be rendered useless because it is not likely that they will live. Nature is neither benign nor vicious; it is impersonal. It doesn't care how hard you have struggled, it doesn't care whether you have a family you need to return to. It just is and if you make a mistake, you deal with it. And so I try to make as few mistakes as possible in the jungle; that's just sensible. But I don't fear when I am in it; I accept it somehow. I know that I would be happier dying of an attack by a wild animal or a fall than I would of cancer. I accept its terms. And I find its harsh, taciturn terms easier to accept because if I failed, it's my fault, and not the fault of some asshole who tripped me up because of jealousy or malice or just plain incompetence or indifference or the inability to think cooperatively rather than competitively. Anyway, I digress. Back to the jungle.

Once we get our sections, we congregate at a central area where we are taught how to shape the ends of the bamboo section into a lip that we can drink from and into a point so that the section can be leaned easily against a tree. And then we are taught how to chip holes in the ends so that we can slip a vine through for easy carry (boy, did I wish I had my swiss army knife then -- my awl would have made the hole so neat!!). Then the instructors ask us to strip the outer covering from the bamboo -- I don't really know why they asked us to do that. Ostensibly it was so that we could dry the bamboo out to prevent splitting when we took it back home but it didn't make much sense to me as bamboo can be dried even with the outer layer. So I am a little puzzled with that -- I will try some experiments with bamboo when I can here to find out more. The final step is to carve a wedge-shaped stopper for the container and then to puncture the container with the stopper. When I punctured mine, I discovered that the bamboo was filled with water and so I happily got a drink out of it. It was refreshing.

This fabrication section was the coolest part of the entire course for me. I loved the wood work. There is a happiness in making something that you will use no matter how stinkingly ugly it is (not that any of us aims for ugliness!!). This has always been hard for me to explain to people. We live in a "ready made" society and we have forgotten the processes that make things useable for us; the processes that pull amorphous bits from the elements and make them into a distinct thing through the interposition of vision and will and labour. I think it is why I really love Levinas' early phenomenology -- he understands what this is and what it feels like for the body and the mind. It is, in his words, "care for the morrow" and "joissance" -- joy, happiness in which the whole person is taken up -- at one and the same time.

It seems like a strange thought to have but we are a society of copy-cats. I doubt very much that many of us have had a seriously original idea in our lives. Really when you think about it, many of us do not fabricate, and even when we do, we fabricate in the light of the fabrication that has gone before us. When I improvise in order to create a tent-peg or a pot holder or a camp bed or a water-bottle, I am not totally creating these things from nowhere. I am seeing the potential to fit the elemental in a form that has come to me from a book, from a diagram, from the utensils of everyday life which are not of my making or of my imagination. I am a consummate copy-cat; a creative one, but a copy-cat nevertheless.

Anyway, the happiness of building also consists in the knowledge that with increasing practice comes a more beautiful work. So eventually, hopefully, my next bamboo water bottles will look a little better and incorporate improvements here and there.

So after the bamboo water bottle fabrication, we go to the stream to fill them and get a good drink and by then the instructors have a good fire going. They ask for our sardines and show us how to cook bamboo rice and smoked sardines in the fire. Apparently, the food will last for 6 weeks or so when it is prepared like this. I'm not sure about that but hmm ... maybe that is another experiment to be tried -- erm ... anyone want to volunteer to eat some weird bush food? ;o) Also the instructors started drying out some bamboo at the fire too. They have assured us that it is hard to find dry wood at the higher campsite where we are going that evening. While this is all going on, the instructors send us on a wild goose chase to look for a particular type of leaf. After lots of failed looking, the instructors tell us that the leaf we are looking for has some antiseptic properties and can stop bleeding -- they call it the "handiplast plant". So that was cool; it was an excellent exercise because we learnt something about biodiversity that afternoon. The number of near misses we had while trying to find that plant was amazing. I am reminded once again of the richness of the rainforest. And while I love the land of Australia and its beautiful microclimates, if I was going to be stranded somewhere, I would want to be stranded in the tropics -- I think I would have a better chance of getting out alive. But then, if I go for Bob Cooper's course in desert survival in Perth.... hmmm ... now how do I get a couple of thousand dollars?? ....

Ok, while the sardines and rice cook, we have to split the firewood between us and find a way of bundling it up so that we can carry it easily and so that it doesn't get wet. We use large leaves as a waterproof membrane and tie the stuff with our vines. We then tie the packages to our packs. We get the sardines back -- they rattle around in the tins like charcoal and they look a little like charcoal. We are speechless. The rice looks marginally better but it is hard like hell. Anyway, we have no time to examine the stuff more closely because we have our last hike of the day to complete. We fill our water bottles again as we are warned that there are no water sources up at the next camp site. Man is water heavy!!! And water in bloody bamboo receptacles that soak up water through the stripped fibre is even heavier!!! It is uphill most of the way now but we make it by about 6.

It has been raining most of the way and the forest has darkened more quickly then even our instructors expected I think. They hastily teach us how to fabricate a shelter from the bertam palm and tell us to get into pairs for the night. Thushan and I find ourselves together. Faisal and Kevin had struck it off quite well at the bus station and we figured that they would pair up. I had initially thought of pairing off with Mingde or ChongMing and then realised that they would probably be more comfortable with each other rather than with Thushan. And since Thushan and I were the oldest farts around with kids, it seemed quite natural that we would get together. Well, we first spotted a lovely area sheltered by the buttresses of a large tree with bertam palm to the other side. We were chased off by our instructors who brought us to this bit of land at an incline of about 30 degrees to the horizontal. That was not my idea of a good piece of land. But what to do? This was what we had to put up with for the training so ok we did our best. We spent some time planning our shelter and communicating ideas. And once we had an image of what we wanted and where we wanted it, Thushan and I set to work. It was easy going and we had a shelter up soon enough.

The next part was fire -- which was a pain. Everything was wet. And I was irritated at being dumped in the place after nightfall. When I camp, I always try to set up camp before nightfall and I have always collected firewood before dark. It just prevents accidents and sticking your hand into a snake pit or centipede or scorpion or something. And of course, our instructors had confiscated my leather gloves at base camp so no hand protection there. We try quite a few different methods to get the fire going. Next valuable lesson: starting a fire in the tropics is NOTHING like starting a fire in Australia. The wood is wet all through and the rain gets in everything. So you need to build your fires big so that the heat can dry out the next batch of wood while one is burning up. And I will always always bring hexamine into the forest. ALWAYS. And I will have to practise major bigtime whenever I can -- especially in the rain -- because I stink at firework. I have learnt a bit in Aust but nothing compared to what I need to know if I am to be truly competent. That is my one major deficiency and unfortunately, it is a serious deficiency in the woods. I have to plug it.

Thushan finally manages to get a fire going. And everyone starts gravitating towards the fire because nobody else has gotten a fire going. We eat a little, not much because we don't really feel hungry surprisingly. The instructors come check on us and tell everyone to take some coals from our fire to start their own. Chong Ming and Mingde try a few times, as do Faisal and Kevin but no one has any luck with their fires. It is a miserable night for most of us. Thushan and I were a little better off because the smoke from the fire kept the sand flies off at least. But the patch of land we were on was uncomfortable and I was worried about dislocating my facet joint in my back again. I had been conscientiously maintaining my muscle tone at least for core muscles in Sing so I worried less than during my most unfit periods in Aust but still that injury nags at me now and then. In the middle of the night, we woke to the sound of the rain a couple of times. I also woke to find the back of my head covered in blood. I looked like I had been shot -- it was of course another leech that had had a feast at my expense!!