The excitement welled up in his chest...
The excitement welled up in his chest as young Regulo hurried up the steep jungle path. In spite of the heaviness of his pack, he broke into a run at the sight of the men working in the clearing. Small but sturdy for his eight years, Regulo González didn't mind his task. In fact, the chance to watch the boat builders was the most exciting thing he had ever done.
"Hola Don Ignacio," he called arriving at the massive fallen trunk where the men were working. Regulo dropped his pack, which held the workmen's lunches, and hurried over to have a look at what they were doing.
The trunk was really starting to look like a "bongo." At Regulo's tender age, time passed slowly; it seemed the men had been working on the tree for a lifetime. In reality it had only been two months ago when Don Ignacio and his two helpers had felled the giant jabillo tree, while Regulo watched from a safe distance. The experienced woodsmen knew which way the tree would fall, but felling a jabillo was a dangerous business, because of the latex in its bark which can blind a person. The men covered their faces with bandanas to protect them from the white "milk" that splattered with each chop.
After felling the tree they went to work with machetes and axes to remove the branches. Then they stripped the spiny bark from the trunk, bandanas still shielding their faces. It took two days working with oxen, ropes and sturdy poles as levers to get the trunk in the right position, so that they could start work on it. The massive tree finally laid exactly as Don Ignacio wanted, with the part of the trunk that would be the hull on the bottom. The men went to work with their axes until the length of the upper side was completely flat.
The hollowing out of the inside of the hull was done with fire. Regulo was curious and asked Don Ignacio about it. The boat builder explained that it was best to use firewood from the "nance" tree because it burned slow and hot. It was important that the jabillo trunk not be too dry. The green wood kept the fire under control. Each day they spread a sticky mixture on the part they wanted to burn, lit it , and then added the nance wood. It took almost two weeks to burn out as much as they dared, without risking damaging the hull.
The next phase of the work required a carpenter's tool called a adz, which looks a little like a short handled garden hoe, but much heavier with a curved blade. With this tool they finished hollowing out the bole of the once proud jabillo. This grueling work had taken another two weeks, but today Regulo noted that Don Ignacio and his men were working on the outside of the hull. When finished the "bongo" would be just over 15 meters long and the hull about two and a half meters wide on the inside.
The following week Regulo watched in fascination as a dozen men from the village attached ropes to the bongo and, together with oxen, dragged the nearly finished boat down the mountain and out of the jungle. Once they got it to the wide trail they wrestled it onto a low-slung carriage with wheels, and pulled it to the beach with a team of oxen. There Don Ignacio finished the work, shaping and curing the hull and mounting the masts. Over four months after beginning the work, the "bongo" was finally launched.
Because of its tall straight bole and ample girth the jabillo tree (Hura crepitans,) was ideal for crafting the long dugout boats called "bongos." The tough outer shell is resistant to salt water making it a good ocean sailing craft. The first merchant sailing vessels along the southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica were bongos, which travelled north from Puerto Cortez trading basic goods. Locally grown products were transported to the market in Puntarenas, returning with much needed manufactured products.
The name "jabillo" is a diminutive of "haba" which is a bean with a pod similar to that of the tree. In colonial days the crown-shaped jabillo pods were often tied together with wire, placed on desk tops and filled with sand which was then used to dry the ink on written pages. This usage gave rise to the name "sandbox tree" common on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica, amongst the English speaking Jamaican immigrants.
At Hacienda Barú National Wildlife Refuge, sandbox trees are some of the largest and most impressive to be found. Girths in excess of eight and a half meters are common in mature trees. The largest tree to exist on Hacienda Barú in the 31 years I have been here was a jabillo with a circumference of over twelve meters. That tree was hollow with an opening like arched doorway and enough room inside to park a small car. The empty chamber reeked of bat guano from the hundreds of furry flying mammals that haunted its depths. That monstrous tree toppled in 1988. Today, not a trace of the original trunk remains, having long since been consumed by a multitude of life -- insects, mold, fungus, bacteria -- and returned to the nutrient cycle of the rainforest, reborn in the form of new vegetation that sprang up in its place.
Tatex is held under pressure within the bark of the jabillo. When punctured with a sharp instrument the irritating milky liquid will squirt out. One squirt in the eyes of a woodpecker or wood boring insect will blind the intruder, probably permanently. Boat maker, Santos Rios, of Uvita who was almost totally blind by the age fifty, attributes his blindness partially to having worked with large jabillo trunks for much of his adult life. Hacienda Barú guide Ronald Alpízar recalls the day that his father, while chopping down a jabillo, was splattered in the eyes with the milk. The elder Alpízar blindly found his way out of the jungle and back to the family home, over one kilometer from the site of the accident. From the front of the house he called to his wife who, at the time, was nursing Ronald's baby sister. Mrs. Alpízar knew from her childhood that mother's milk was effective in treating the irritation caused by the jabillo sap. She repeatedly rinsed her husband's eyes with her breast milk and within thirty minutes his sight returned. He suffered no after effects.
The blinding properties of the jabillo latex was used by some early settlers of this region as a method for catching fish. Although not something I would recommend, people were known to strip the spiny bark from the tree and tether it in a gently flowing current of a stream. Then the "fishermen" would run downstream and snatch the blind fish from the water. As strange as this fishing technique may seem, it was nevertheless effective and commonly used during the first part of the last century.
One day, a couple of visitors to Hacienda Barú, and I were dangling from ropes in the top of a giant camaron tree (Licania operculipetala,) about as far above the jungle floor as a twelve story building. The sound of gunshots abruptly interrupted our enjoyment of the fantasy world of the canopy. The sharp cracks seemed to be coming from the hillside behind a massive jabillo tree about 100 meters from our position. At first I thought it might be poachers, but that seemed unlikely at midday.
A few minutes later we heard another shot. The sound was really more like a firecracker than a gunshot, but the idea that someone had climbed the hills up into the jungle to light firecrackers was even more preposterous than poachers at high noon. By the time we rappelled back to the jungle floor and walked down the hill, we had heard a total of eight shots. I mentioned the incident to some of the guides but nobody had any ideas. The refuge forest guards went up and checked the area later that afternoon, but found nothing. A couple of days later I was returning from the same place around noon. While walking directly underneath a jabillo tree I heard another shot directly overhead. This one was followed by a shower of seeds.
Guide Juan Ramón Segura, who was with me, knew exactly what had happened. As I mentioned earlier, the jabillo seed pod grows in the shape of a crown. In the heat of the sun the pods burst with a loud crack--our gunshot--and fly apart. This is the jabillo's strategy for throwing seeds as far from the tree as possible. This extra distance gives the young seedlings a better chance of falling in a stream to be carried away, hopefully to fertile ground, or at least fall outside of the shade of the parent tree where more life giving sunlight is available.
Several days later I had the luck to find an intact ring or crown of jabillo seeds that had been knocked out of the tree in one piece. The pod was green and may have been knocked down by a bird or squirrel. Marveling at the interesting shape, I retrieved it from the ground and took it home, where I placed it on my bedside table together with some other interesting seeds I had collected. The beautiful seed crown was the most interesting of all my seed collection and was often displayed to guests along with the story of the mystery gunshots.
Then one hot, dry summer night in March, at 01:30 AM it exploded. Terrified, I came flying out of bed in the dark, banged my head on the wall, and landed barefoot on half a dozen sharp pointed, sickle-shaped jabillo seeds. Lifting both feet at once I landed in a heap on the floor, now with knees and thighs punctured in the same manner. It wasn't until my wife Diane turned on the light, that I finally came to my senses and figured out what had happened. After an unpleasant application of tincture of iodine to my wounds, I returned to a dreamland filled with the floating curved shapes of dark brown, sharp tipped jabillo seeds.
Today a number of indigenous groups and arts and crafts groups in rural communities are designing and creating handmade jewelry and other adornments from the cat claw shaped jabillo seeds and other products of the rainforest. In this manner they utilize the products of the forest but cause it no harm. At the same time these local communities are teaching others about the plight of the vanishing tropical forests and setting a positive example for their salvation. Support these groups by buying their attractive crafts. Ask at you favorite gift shop for handmade products made by local groups.
When you think about the rainforest remember the jabillo and how one tree has so influenced the history of a region. Remember its many uses and keep in mind that there are hundreds of others out there that are just as versatile. There aren't many jabillos left. We have about thirty at Hacienda Barú National Wildlife Refuge. To me the jabillo is a symbol of how the tropical forests have sustained past generations of people and how it holds out promise for the future. I find it fascinating and hope you will too.
The recommended reading is The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono, ISBN 0-930031-06-07.
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