What Kids Can Do with Fire, Dough, and Confidence

Wet Wood, Hot Coals, and a Striped Hyena

Hi, I’m BD Greenman — your Cowboy Rabbi from Israel.

It’s the third day I’ve been out here with the boys, and once again I’m trying to get a fire going so we’ll be ready to bake bread together. The rain is gone, but the ground is still holding onto it. The earth is soaked, the wood is heavy and wet, and nothing wants to cooperate. Behind me, there’s a fire now — but it fought me the whole way. Every stick had to be convinced. Every log had to be placed just right. By the time the flames finally caught, I was covered in sweat and dirt. I worked like a monkey just to get wet wood to burn.

Today I skipped the classic tipi-style fire. Wet conditions need air, not hope. I stacked the logs like a log cabin, leaving space for oxygen to rush through. One fireproof starter, one strike of the flint, and suddenly the fire stopped arguing. The flames climbed, the wood began drying itself, and the whole thing settled into a strong, steady burn. With a little luck, we’d have good coals in about fifteen minutes — right on time for the boys.

When they arrived, the fire wasn’t the only lesson.

One of the students stepped forward to explain how to bake bread using two tin cans, foil, five small rocks, and some dough. The rocks go into the bottom of the larger can, lifting the smaller can off the heat so the bread doesn’t burn. The dough gets wrapped in parchment paper, tucked inside, covered with foil, and then — with a staff member and a shovel — carefully placed into the fire.

The boys scattered, hunting for rocks, adjusting cans, making sure everything was just right. Dirty hands. Focused faces. Real learning.

That’s when I stopped them for a moment.

I told them to look at what they were doing. Eight-, nine-, ten-year-old kids — learning skills that their older brothers, eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, have no idea how to do. I said, Look at you. You can take dough, throw it in a can, put it in a fire, and pull out a gourmet roll that tastes incredible.

How cool is that? This isn’t simple. It isn’t obvious. Most adults couldn’t do this without instructions, videos, or a panic moment. And here they were — kids who could walk into the dark with confidence, because they had real skills. Fire skills. Awareness. Patience. Capability. An eight-year-old who knows how to bake bread over an open fire is carrying something powerful. That’s not just food — that’s independence.

As the bread baked and the fire settled into glowing coals, one of the boys froze and pointed.

A hyena! A striped hyena stood nearby, watching us. Not aggressive. Not threatening. Just curious. I told the boys to notice his behavior, his body language. He was checking us out, deciding if we mattered.

For a moment, everything slowed down. Fire crackling. Bread rising quietly in tin cans. A wild animal reminding us that we were guests in his world.

This is why we do this.

Because when a kid can stand in the dark, tend a fire, bake bread, and stay calm while a hyena watches from the edge — that kid is learning something far bigger than survival.

They’re learning who they are.