The jungle survival course -- part 4

Day 4 and 5

We are up at about 7-8am. We eat whatever we can. I scoff down more sardine -- yuck -- and rice. I am not going to touch the instant noodles with a ten foot pole after what happened the previous night. While we are eating and milling around, we hear the boom of a buttress root being struck. Being the smart asses that we are, we decide to reply to the sound signal but not with a buttress root boom but with my trusty survival whistle that I have hidden away in my shirt; it is always there on a necklace with my torch and small neck knife (which I didn't bring with me this time). Sure enough, after some time, one of the instructors turns up at the camp site and asks us why we didn't reply to their signalling. We tell him that we did reply and I am quite sure they heard us but just wanted to know why we didn't use the buttress root system. We quote their own pamphlet at them: learning how to survive using what you have and whatever you can find around you. I think they don't really know what to do with our motley crew. It is always dangerous to get a bunch of philosophy students around; they exercise slightly too much freedom of thought, especially with military types around.

Anyway, we get invited down to the instructor's campsite where there is coffee and cookies and a couple of buns. So we happily munch away while getting more stories from our instructor. And we get a chance to refill our water bottles at the stream too. While we are there, the instructor teaches us how to get a sense of the weather by looking at the way the smoke from the fire rises. It's a very loose and not a great way of predicting things -- I'd rather have a barometer watch. [Hint! Hint! The Casio Protrek with triple sensor is a LOVELY watch for my next birthday/Christmas/whatever. :o)] But when all else fails, I'll watch the smoke! ;o)

Anyway, we have to get back to our campsite and pack up. We have a large amount of walking that day because we are trying to squeeze two days' trek into one. You see, it was all our fault -- the Singapore bunch had arranged it such that we were going to arrive back in Singapore on Wednesday morning at 4 am and go back to work/school at 11 am that same day. So we tell our instructor that he can't be late at all for the bus on Tuesday afternoon. He looks at us mildly but in his mind, we realise now that he thought we were crazy to not allow ourselves one day's rest before going back to work. So he quietly decides that he is not going to make us camp out as he initially planned on Monday. He decides instead to take us back to his friend's house for the night and take us to the hot springs which is the "traditional" thing to loosen up your muscles after a hike.

Anyway, we start off and we get to the top of this lovely waterfall where we get a chance to take some photos -- you see the photo at the first page of this blog. The pace of everything had been so hectic the last few days that we hardly got to take our cameras out at all. I don't have a camera [having left it with B. in Aust] so I had to rely on everyone else's photos. Once we finished with the photos, we then started our hike in earnest. We had a short uphill section again -- not too bad this time but steep, very very steep. We are talking about 70 degree inclines. We have to space ourselves out a bit so that if we fall we don't take the other person walking after us along with us. We reach the ridge finally and then start our tracking lessons.

We learn how to observe the ground and plants for signs of disturbance. We also learn how to mark a trail. Then the fun begins -- we get split into teams and one team will mark a trail while the others try to track them. It is challenging and tremendously fun. We do more of this and eventually the instructors plant a trail for us to track and we are supposed to count the number of marks they have left for us. Mingde and I got 20 out of 27 marks -- which was considered decent. After that, more plant identification. It also started raining at this point. We were hoping that the rain wouldn't be too bad but luck was not on our side and the rain bucketed down. When I say bucketed down, I really mean that. Imagine being in the middle of the rainforest with a very dense canopy and still feeling the rain pelting on your face like a shower head turned to maximum or a garden hose right in your face and chest!

Well, you can imagine what the rain did to the ground -- which was mainly clayey. It was a nightmare. The clay became colloidal very quickly and quickly got more fragile and more vulnerable to environmental factors -- like footsteps. Clayey soil is bad enough but clayey soil after a whole bunch of people have stepped and slipped on it is horrible because it becomes compacted and even more slippery. Erg! And here we were walking along inclines with gradients of about 70% in those conditions. I think that was the hardest part of the course. And it was also in those circumstances that I discovered how wonderful a walking stick could be. It functions more or less like an ice-axe; when you feel yourself falling, you jab the stick into the ground and arrest your fall with it if you can't find a nearby tree to hang onto. And sometimes, you can jab your stick into the ground to give you an extra thing to hang onto to prevent falls. My stick really saved my butt a couple of times. The alternative is to go sliding down cliffs without any prospect of arresting your own fall unless you can catch a tree on your way down. I was also very pleased that I wore fairly high boots with stiff leather uppers. I'm fairly certain they saved my ankles a few times over the uneven ground. We spent as much time slipping as we did walking in those conditions.

And the thing was that half way through we got lost. The second half of the group split from the first half and it was some time before we realised that we had lost the trail. When we found out, we stopped. Thankfully, our guides had walkie-talkies and contacted the first half of the group. They found us eventually. But that meant that we lost time and so we had to keep up a break neck pace in these conditions in order to make it back to base camp by sundown.

We did a few river crossings in order to get back to base camp and it is quite amazing how even a shallow stream can pack a real punch when there is intense tropical rain. We could feel the current against our knees and boots when we were crossing the streams and I hate to think what would have happened if someone had slipped and didn't unclip himself from his pack. We were all fairly cautious and careful so there were no accidents which was great. However, I have to say that I felt a little uncomfortable about this last stretch of the course. I felt happy and safe with most of the course. But I didn't like how that last trek went. I would have chosen to break the trek into two and stayed an extra night out rather than to have risked the kind of pace we were keeping, given the terrain and the environmental conditions we were faced with. It wouldn't have been any problem without the rain.

Mingde and ChongMing tell me that it is quite common for them to do that kind of pace in the army. But then the army's injury statistics are not great and the army also has helivac (helicopter evacuation) services. If you are in a survival situation or even on a civilian trek, I think it is foolhardy to risk your body that way because each injury decreases your chance of getting out alive and if you get injured in the middle of the forest in Perak, medical aid isn't exactly going to be fast in coming. So you just better pray very hard that if you get injured, you don't have severe bleeding or have any internal bleeding because you are in a really serious situation if you do. I'm not prepared to take those chances, especially when they can be avoided so I guess I am a lot more conservative than my friends are. I think Thushan (and maybe Faisal) felt a little uncomfortable about it too as we exchanged notes later.

It was Mingde who had the closest shave with danger though; he fell right when the path took us on a cliff alongside the waterfall. Thushan, who was walking behind Mingde, had remarkable presence of mind. He jabbed his walking stick into the hillside and yelled at Mingde to grab the stick. He then managed to pull Mingde back up. I think if Mingde has slipped any further, he might have gone down the cliff right into the waterfall and well, it was a huge drop down from there. But in any case, we all made it out in one piece.

Interestingly, all along the way, in all the days, not a single person complained about things. I think that was the one thing I really enjoyed about this trip. We did share our reservations and whatever thoughts we had fairly factually and concretely and I enjoyed that a lot. I believe it would have been different with a different group of people.

We finally reached the end of the trail at around 5pm in the evening. And then we had another short trek down the mountain to our base camp. But that was on paved road. By that time, we were exhausted, hungry, dehydrated. We mainly stood around and waited for some food to arrive --- fried bananas and stuff -- and of course, spent lots of time trying to get the leeches off. Because of the river crossings, they were everywhere. I was fortunate and had quite a good time; because I had been trained to blouse my boots (that means to tuck your pants into your socks and then your socks into your boots like they do in the army) and to always keep my shirt tucked into my pants and my sleeves buttoned, most of my body was clear of leeches. I got them on my hands and neck mainly; although there were loads clinging to my socks and boots trying to worm their way in. Some of the other guys who were a little more relaxed about attire landed up with leeches on their thighs and stomach etc. And it was just a whole saga trying to get ourselves clear of the leeches -- they are really hard to peel off once they start biting. You can see what Faisal's legs look like after the leeches have been peeled off in the photograph below -- not the prettiest sight.



Most of us were a little numb from the experience by that point; it was this strange experience of knowing that you have been physically extended past your regular levels but extended to a point where you are a little dissociated from your body and you feel like you can keep walking, keep hiking because of the rhythm of things even when all your muscles are strained. It's a funny sensation: I used to feel it after a very hard day's training at athletics (we had a mad instructor who used to make us run carrying logs which we had to lift over our heads whenever we passed certain designated points). But once you stop for a while, you start feeling the lactic acid build-up in your muscles and you know you are in trouble because every movement becomes increasingly painful. I don't know if the rest felt it in quite the same way I did -- I am really out of shape. When I am with B and J in Aust, I eat really well but don't get half the amount of activity I need. when I'm on my own, I get more activity than usual (although still not enough) but I don't eat half as well. You become very sloppy about eating in Singapore; it is just so easy and convenient and cheap to get yummy food everywhere. Unfortunately, it's not food that is always particularly good for you. Rats, I have to get my life in order here. I have made it a point to whack all the ingredients for a salad in the staff fridge every week so I get my greens and freshies but I need to do my own sandwiches more often.

Anyway, there isn't really any place to shower at base camp. There is no shower. There is only a communal concrete bath which you have to scoop water from and pour over yourself. Every one is a little embarrassed about me because they don't know what to do about change and shower facilities for me. They haven't quite tweaked that most of my male friends have forgotten that I'm female by the time they agree to do this kind of stuff with me. So anyway, in order to save everyone the embarrassment, I get together with Mingde and Chongming and ask if they are comfortable having a shower together. They were cool and so I basically announced that we were going for a shower together to save time. I also basically needed someone to check my back for leeches for me. So we do that and then manage to crawl into our cleaner clothes for the rest of the evening. I can't tell you how fantastic it felt to have that shower and to powder yourself liberally after!! It was sheer heaven!

We pack up after and zoom off to our digs for the night. Our instructor has arranged for a friend of his to put us up. We were all going to crowd into two rooms when they tell me that I have a separate room – because a woman can't sleep with men in the same room. My instructor gives me a hint about it being local custom and I realise that in the jungle and base camp, they are happy for me to sleep together with the guys but back in civilisation, I have to be a lady. It's so funny. I remember an article one of my students had saved for me about Albanian women who take on a vow of gender transference and “become men” when their fathers or husbands die so that there will be at least one man in the house and they can look after the family. They remain celibate for the rest of their lives but they are treated like exactly one of the guys, with the freedom and authority that comes from being “male”. There are days when this amuses me and I look on it with indulgence as a backward quaint practice that will pass as the world becomes a global village. But I also wonder what has prompted me all my life to deliberately maintain a position of gender androgyny – is it the unconscious realisation that no matter how far feminism has progressed, we still treat women as second class citizens and I still have more freedom when I am seen as a man? It's not that I am forcing myself into something I wouldn't naturally do. I still remember how as a child, jeans and shorts were always my first choices over dresses and skirts. But the older I grow, the more my androgyny has become consciously chosen and existentially endorsed as much as it is an innate disposition that I have allowed free play to shape my life. I simply see no reason why my life has to be restricted simply because those restrictions are what is expected of me as a being gendered in one way rather than another. I wouldn't mind controlling the expression of my gender if I thought that it would enhance the communal good but I actually think the opposite holds true.

Women don't realise the degree to which they suffer under gender stereotypes. I mean we have universal suffrage, we get educated, we have jobs. So what is the problem here? The problem here is the fabric of the everyday that constrains us without us realising it. Here's something for you to think about – clothing design. I think women still suffer under the oppression of clothes tailored with an eye to form more than function. And you know what the worst part is? We don't know it and we collude in it because we can't give up the usual ideas about what a woman is supposed to look like and how a woman is supposed to dress.

9 times out of 10, I will pick mens' clothes over those designed for women. Why? Pockets. To have functional pockets is to have liberation for your hands and to have a tonne of gear that you can carry sensibly and which is with you all the time – like swiss army knives and torches and money and keys and phones. I'm dying to see the day when I can create a chain of stores called “the sensible woman”. I already have the advertising campaign all planned. All I need to do is to go to any office building and shoot. The commercial is simple – I will simply station my camera outside a door and do a time lapse thing and count the number of times women are unable to hold a door open because they are holding their keys, mobile, purse and coffee in two hands and the number of times men have the same problem. I know what the answer will be – women will outnumber men exponentially with this problem. Why?? NO POCKETS.... It is also impossible to find a pair of women's hiking pants that are long enough to blouse properly and not only that, they make the bloody pants FLARED at the bottom. Which freaking self-respecting hiker will wear flared trouser legs????

Now take another look at women's shirts – yes those teeny weensy things that come up to your hips with the shapely bust conforming lines. Like those?? Death-traps to your arms. Try stretching to the top shelf of your favourite library bookcase and see how comfortable you feel. Does the shirt tighten up at your triceps and pull across your biceps and bust? Do you feel a waft of fresh air upon your belly? Well, guess why? That's because it IS exposed and every dwarf can stare up at your boobs ... which of course, you have hidden under a respiration inhibiting bra right? Then try wearing a properly fitted men's shirt and do the same thing. What do you find? No pressure anywhere and the shirt is long enough to stay tucked in your pants. I have an old joke -- when a tailor runs out of cloth to sew a man's shirt, he asks his friend what to do. His friend's answer: make a woman's shirt. Its funny but it's also not funny because what we can and can't do comfortably is built into what we wear.

Same thing with shoes. 9 times out of 10 – actually 10 times out of 10, I will pick men's boots and shoes. Why? Again functionality. Find me one pair of women's hikers that are 8 eyelets high and I will take you out for lunch immediately. The only people who manufacture 16 eyelet boots are military boot manufacturers and they manufacture ... primarily for men. But why? Why is it that women don't deserve the same ankle protection as men? They don't hike as much? What bollocks! And don't get me started on formal office shoes. Also why is it that if you try to buy women's motorcycle jackets, you will find that they always come in a grade of leather thinner than the equivalent male jacket. What is this? Women don't need as much protection when they fall off their bikes? Do we suddenly have thicker skin or what? I talked to Mars Leathers – a top manufacturer of leather gear for motorcyclists in Melbourne once about this. Their reply was that women like their jackets thinner because they like their jackets lighter -- oh really?? How come nobody consulted me as a woman about this because that sure as hell isn't my answer?? I asked how many focus groups of women they had – no answer. I buy only mens' leather motorcycle jackets and pants. I recommend you do too.

Women, liberate yourselves!! Cross-dress for a year and I'll guarantee you that you will never look at women's clothes in the same way again. I know some of my friends wonder about my image and they wonder why I can't/won't dress in a more womanly way. But that's the problem: they are asking the wrong question. The thing is that when I pick my clothes, they have very little to do with whether they look male or not. I am very happy wearing sarongs (skirt wraps) at home and at the beach – I am exclusively in them at home. My choice of clothes has everything to do with whether they extend my ability to live the form of life I enjoy and whether they constrain me in unnecessary ways and by that standard, women's clothes stink. I wear more women's shirts nowadays since I've discovered Portman's in Australia. Somehow, I often find them turning up in second hand stores with tags on or barely worn and many fit me fantastically. They fit my almost “Bauhaus” criteria of form fitting function. But pants are still a no no.

Sorry to spew about women and gender and feminism and my own self-image here. But I am going to teach a course on feminism soon enough and I think my brains are starting to pattern themselves to look for things to talk about. Unfortunately, this stuff is not exactly systematic philosophy. It is still anecdotal. There is a critical theory paper here waiting to be born but not yet, not yet. At any rate, I am toying with the idea of challenging my kids to cross-dress for a month and keep a log of their bodies. I don't know what their parents and the university will think. But hey, they are supposed to be getting educated in a more critically reflective way right? And Singapore wants to be at the cutting edge right? It will be an interesting experience I'm sure. If you want to learn, your learning better touch your life. It will be worth more than any lecture I could ever give.

Anyway ok ok, back to the hall of justice and the jungle survival course thing. So we are at our instructor's house and they have insisted that I sleep in a separate room because I am a woman. Unfortunately, they kick the kids out of their room so that I can have it. I'm deeply embarrassed and ask if I can sleep on the floor in the living room or something. But they won't hear of it; it would be a failure of hospitality. And so I sleep in some poor kid's bed that night. I like the Muslims for this spirit of generosity and hospitality. I remember one of the most shocking incidents I encountered in Australia was having someone relate to me an anecdote about her friend's mother telling her to replace the bread and butter she used while a guest in their house (she didn't stay there long at all). She was so insulted, she filled the larder. Was it because she was Asian? Or was that friend's mother just a calculative jerk who did not know how to give anyway? We will never know. There is a reason I hate the calculatingness of the modern economy – it steals something from us when we are not looking. It steals friendship and generosity and hospitality. It steals from us our ability to give and take with open hands and an open heart, confident that there is nothing back behind the giving.

We go out for dinner at a hawker stall nearby-- it's owned by the people we are staying with and the food is excellent. I expected that we would be really hungry and ready to stuff ourselves like pigs. But interestingly, I find that I can't eat all that much despite the few days of minimal food and extreme activity. I notice that everyone else doesn't seem to be stuffing their face totally either. That's interesting. We then go back home and sit and talk to our hosts a little and finally go to bed. The rest that night is wonderful; deep and refreshing. I wake up the next morning with muscles aching (which I expected) but with my feet feeling funny. I sense everything underfoot; every pebble, every grain. My feet were waterlogged and totally shrivelled the day before but it didn't explain the sensations I was getting then. I only tweaked the following day when I found that my feet and ankles swollen to almost one and a half times their regular size – combination of excessive prolonged standing and sitting (the bus journey was 10 hours or so) and also dehydration and my electrolytes being totally off. Not a good combination – I returned to normal once I started drinking and eating normally and I am fine now.

We spend the morning drying out our wet clothes or at least those of us with enough energy to unpack and then repack our bags did. And while our clothes were drying, we went for a dip in the hot springs. Oh that was lovely. It relaxed our muscles and helped us unwind. And then it was back to the house again to pack and get going to the bus interchange for our journey back to KL and then onto Singapore.

What can I say? I paid RM500 to suffer and join the military for 4 days so some of my friends say! They think I am nuts. Oh but I gained so much and I loved every moment of it. It wasn't just the skills that I picked up there. I needed a different space to let certain reflections sit ... some of which you read about here and others are elsewhere in my head and in my hand. I needed to be reminded of what it was like to be tested. Maybe I am an adrenaline junkie but I don't think so. I need a sense of a form of life which was somehow more elemental, more concrete than the life that I live ordinarily – somehow I can't function properly without that every once in a while and I hadn't been doing that lately. I have always needed that and the jungle for me has always offered that. It keeps me honest; it gives me the happiness of being free but reminds me at one and the same time of the austerity and harshness of that freedom because nature is unforgiving of fools. But isn't this why the Talmud reminds us that humanity, while deriving from and belonging to nature, is separated from nature by an essential dimension? Because it is humanity that offers us the space to forestall the instant of natural brutality with speech and thought which allow us cooperation and communal action in peace; and affords us the capacity for grace, mercy and love?

Sigh. I read all this and it sounds right to me. But I know also that it sounds out of place in the professional world I inhabit where humanity is thought of as just so many synapses and ideals just another bunch of constituted ideas. A humanist sensibility is just so outmoded in the 21st century but the thing is that I can't find anything that fits me all that much better.

More hiking adventures next time.