Hmmm, I have been struggling with this question for some time now. And no, I am not dieting or controlling obesity, far from it. The question has repeatedly burrowed out from the deep hole in the mind I had buried it in and refuses to lay in peace. OK, let me tell you what my worry is. It is about the OTA Survival School courses.
These are wilderness survival courses and participants need to have a survival experience. Meaning the course needs to be simulated to the extent that the participants actually feel they have survived the duration of the course and finally reached the safety and comfort of home. And it is only for two or three days in any case. My original plan was to provide major sleep, food and water deprivation to give them a feel of what it feels like to be sleepy, to be hungry, to be thirsty. A situation where they would go hungry if they could not catch food, thirsty if there was no way to purify the water they had found.
But then I figured that most people are so strung up for the week that to be paying to get screwed would have led to possible mutiny ... and then we could really have a survival situation with guns blazing, knives flashing and people out to strangle the guy who was found to be hiding a bar of chocolate in his backpack.
Modification to the curriculum. Participants might be offered frugal food through the course. MIGHT being the operative word. Bread, eggs, butter, potatoes, etc. Maybe even a juice. Just so that they know what it is like to be hungry in a survival situation but with a more controlled degree of difficulty and an easier level of tolerance. Feed them before they go berserk and instead of happy participants sending me more clients, a bunch of angry humans swearing to blacklist the course from here to eternity and back again.
Curriculum modified again. As of a little while ago, the plan is to offer three squares a day, but a lunatic that I am, three squares with a twist. All the meals are cooked over a campfire. And they are cooked by the participants themselves. No one to cook the food, no one to serve it, no one to blame if the salt is too less ... is there is any salt at all. Give them the ingredients, whatever they want ... chicken, mutton, fish, prawns, rabbits, steaks, whatever. Even veggies and spices. Get the guys to cook their food.
This is the plan as of a little while ago. I think the decision is made ... TO EAT. Not to eat is not an option any more. I need to sleep on it a little more and if it still sounds good a few hours later, this is the way it will be. But who knows the fickleness of the human mind. Maybe there will be a cook after all. But I will resist it with all the power at my disposal (and that is not saying too much). I have already given a yard away by agreeing to offer food, haven't I?
There is still the question of where to sleep and where to crap. Basic comforts demanded by city folk, even if they happen to be in the middle of a jungle participating in a survival course. But that is another question, to be addressed another day. My mind at the moment is simmering with the wafting aroma of a rabbit being grilled over an open flame, with all the anxious eyes and salivating tongues of the participants, knives at the ready, waiting to fight for the largest piece.
So, to eat it is.
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