asked, not really wanting an answer.
Each group got the same thing: two live chickens, a handful of rice and some yucca roots to boil. We collected ours and headed off to construct our bohio.
“Anybody ever kill a chicken?” Ward Warren asked of no one in particular. No one responded.
“We’ll draw straws for the honor tonight,” he said with a laugh. Ward, a graduate of the University of Michigan, had studied Chinese affairs and spoke Mandarin fluently. He was an internal, meaning that he had joined the JOT program from a position elsewhere within the agency.
We picked a site under some shade and started planning the structure. To sleep seven we figured the bohio platform would have to be at least 12 feet by 24 feet. Thank goodness there was no shortage of trees.
None of us had studied engineering of any sort, and we had only machetes and entrenching tools, so this would be no mean feat. The soil was soft, however, so digging the holes for logs to support the platform’s frame would not be too difficult.
Three men got started with that. The rest, machetes in hand, set out to bring back suitable trees. The jungle was full of softwood varieties, and we were able to chop down trees with waist-sized-diameter trunks after about 15 minutes of hacking. Then we trimmed off the branches before carrying them back to the site.
Where possible we selected trees with a sturdy V shape in the trunk somewhere, so we could lay other trees onto them to build up the platform. We lashed some into place with vines we had stripped down with our bayonet knives.
As the afternoon wore on, the bohio gradually took shape. It wasn’t going to win any prizes, but it would serve our purposes for one night. By dusk we were spreading the roof of palm branches, and the bloody thing was done. Ill-proportioned and uneven, lacking stairs to get in, and with a roof that likely wouldn’t stop much rain, at least it was sturdy. We felt satisfied that we had completed it, and we wondered how many other groups had actually finished theirs.
Exhausted, we turned our thoughts to dinner and eyed the two poultry specimens tethered to the ground nearby.
“So who wants the honor?” Ward asked.
None of us city kids felt eager to kill and clean chickens, so Bill stepped into the breach.
“I’ll kill the damn birds,” he growled.
“I’ll help,” Ralph announced to Bill’s satisfaction, and they approached our still-walking dinner.
“Do it somewhere else,” Bob offered. “Blood might attract snakes.”
Bill glared at him, but he and Ralph grabbed the squawking birds and headed off into the jungle.
“Let’s get a fire started,” I suggested. “We also have to boil the rice and yucca.”
“Easier said than done,” André commented. “It’s hard to find dry wood.”
He was right. It rained frequently in the jungle and sunlight didn’t penetrate the canopy in many places, so dry kindling was scarce. But it had to be done, and we spread out looking for anything that would burn. Eventually we got a fire started, not a very hot one but a fire.
“Anyone ever boil rice?” Ward asked. “Do you put it into the water before or after the water boils?”
“After,” Bob said. “I think that’s how my mom always did it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” André interjected. “It’s not Minute Rice from Uncle Ben. We’ll just cook it until it’s soft enough to eat.”
We agreed that was a good idea.
It had grown dark—very dark—and quiet; no squawking from the chickens. We used our metal canteen cups to boil the rice and the yucca roots, neither of which looked appetizing. We rigged up a crude spit to roast the chickens—nobody thought about boiling them in pieces—and set the canteen cups on rocks as close to the fire as we could. Lord only knew how long it would take for the water to start boiling.
“Here they are,” Bill announced, as he and Ralph returned with the hacked-up chickens.
“We threw the insides as far away as we could,” Ralph added.
“Many thanks, you guys,” I said. “Couldn’t have been much fun.”
“Wasn’t,” Bill mumbled.
We skewered the chickens and put them on the makeshift spit over the fire. We waited and waited—and waited. Nothing happened. The fire wasn’t hot enough to cook them. We waited some more. At least the water boiled, barely, and the rice cooked a little. Same with the yucca, but it remained hard.
Hungry as we were, in the end the fatigue won out. We managed to eat a few mouthfuls of half-cooked rice, chucked the yucca, and threw the still-raw chickens as far into the jungle as we could. Nobody wanted to wait for what might have been hours to finish cooking the food. Sleep seemed a much better choice.
We climbed onto the bohio, which I am pleased to report did not collapse under our weight. We settled ourselves on its hopelessly uneven floor and tried to get some rest. It really was uncomfortable, but I fell quickly into a deep sleep. The others did as well, and nothing bothered us until dawn. We had dug holes, felled trees and labored to construct our bohio for over seven hours, so we felt the effect.
Along with the slogging through the mud back in paramilitary training, I often wondered about the value of this effort as well. Did building a bohio also build character?
Next morning the field kitchen produced a hot breakfast that we thought was delicious—mainly because we were famished. I noticed everyone attacking their meals with gusto and suspected that not many of those chickens had actually been eaten.
“Wonder what this fine day has in store for us,” André said.
Now in the middle of our second week we sat in the back of the truck, as it headed again into the jungle on another bright and sunny morning.
“Who knows?” I answered. “We’ll find out soon. The trucks are slowing down.”
We poured out of the back and found ourselves next to Gatun Lake, actually a part of the Panama Canal. The shore was sandy and the water looked inviting. About 30 large, black rubber boats floated in the shallow water, a stack of paddles on the shore. The head instructor faced the lake, and we faced him.
“Each group should get a boat and paddles,” he announced. “We’re going to do some work on the water today. This exercise is going to familiarize you with how to handle a small boat. No big thing, you just coordinate your paddling.”
He hoisted a paddle and demonstrated where to place your hands and how to pull forward.
“Across the lake and back,” he continued. “Just go around the orange buoy over there on the other side.”
He seemed to be taking a lot longer than necessary to explain something that was pretty simple.
“Two more things,” he continued. “First, this is going to be a race.”
Everybody
