I remember when I was still in college I attended the Leadership Training Program. It was my first time to join such training. Participants were class officers, organization officers and the student council. If I were not the class president that time, I would not be able to experience it and I would have missed half of my life. I would never forget how the facilitators made us crawl on the muddy ground, cross the big branches of some trees, climb the wall and jump into the pool that we all did blind-folded. They made us touch dung and they even put dung on our faces that we discovered later on it was only mud (in Tagalog, putik as in putik talaga!). But then the most memorable is the Boodle fight. The facilitators laid banana leaves on a table, started to serve varieties of food and spread them over the table. If I remember it right there were pansit, Filipino-style spaghetti, steamed rice, ripe bananas, ripe mangoes, tuyo (dried fish), sardines, barbeque and some chichiria (junk food). Boodle fight symbolizes camaraderie among team members so the food were eaten together and with bare hands. According to en.wikipedia.org, this way of eating was devised by PMA cadets, and does not represent authentic Philippine culture, but instead symbolizes fraternity and equality among PMA members by their sharing the same food without regard to rank. The term is taken from pre-World War Two West Point slang meaning "any party at which boodle (candy, cake, ice cream, etc.) is served."
Nowadays, having a boodle fight is still a practice especially in the military. But somehow it became a tradition. It will not be missing in some team building activities and even in some town fiestas. Also, some team games like Airsoft also put in practice having boodle fights within the team.
(Photo from blogneffy.blogspot.com)
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