Kumbira Fieldwork 2015 – Trip 1

The first field trip of this year was marked by the beginning of our CLP funded project and took place from August 5^th to August 9^th. During this field trip we had a meeting with the administrator of Conda (the municipality where Kumbira is located), Mr. Fernando Fonseca, where we presented the project and share some ideas and concerns. Mr. Fonseca show himself very receptive and supportive with the project.

Then we continue our trip to Kumbira, where we met with the “soba” (traditional chief of Kumbira village). In this meeting we also presented the project and asked the soba for his permission to establish an experimental nursery within the community lands (Figure 1). The “soba” kindly indicated a suitable parcel of land that we could occupied for this task and the local people we could work with.

Figure 1. Aimy Cáceres and Michael Mills meeting with Soba (Chief) Gibala from Kumbira village to discuss the nursery. The chief welcome this initiative and granted a suitable parcel of land for this purpose.

We set up the nursery with the help of two local workers, Arbino and Avelino. With the assiatnce of Michael Mills we collected saplings of native trees in the areas where old-growth forest was still present (Figure 2). Then, these saplings were planted in plastic bags and placed in the nursery that had a shade constructed by Avelino and Arbino using Inga vera branches and oil palm leaves (Figure 3).

Figure 2. Michael Mills teaching Avelino how to collect a tree sapling

Figure 3. Nursery constructed with Inga vera branches and oil palm leaves

Figure 4. From left to right: Sergio Fasz, Arbino and Avelino