Pépinière

Getting a tree nursery (pépinière) off the ground has been more than a little bit difficult, but it was supposed to be my number one priority according to some of the work I did with my community host (Florence) during stage in Bafia. After a few trips to Yaounde to find the needed supplies, Florence and I started mixing the substrate to fill the polypots (aka mixing cow shit with sand, compost, and dirt then putting it in plastic bags).

My natural state here seems to be disgustingly sweaty

The first big difficulty was trying to find seeds, I had decided we would start with a small batch of 300 cacao because everyone in Bibondi already grows it, and it would be easy to sell. After a few months of waiting for some one who claimed would provide me with the seeds I ended up having to go all the way to Ebolowa myself, a 16 hour round trip with an overnight stop in Yaounde to literally pick the cabooses myself. It ended up being worth it though because I met a guy doing doctoral research on cacao at the IRAD (government agricultural research) station that speaks perfect English, and he told me I could call him any time I have any technical questions. Once I got the seeds back to Bibondi they where washed and allowed to germinate before being put into the polypots.  I did all this with a woman's group that Florence is the head of called CAAFBI. 

Washing

The seeds take about a week to germinate, and cannot be allowed to dry out, or be exposed to the sun.

The next big hurtle was getting some one to put up the shade. Many tree's, especially cacao, don't do well in direct sunlight at first, so you need to construct a shade for them. Unfortunately all the seedlings that had been placed in polypots where now sitting in either direct sunlight or total shade (50% shade is best). I finally gave up on waiting for some one else to do it (If I do the work myself it isn't really sustainable development), and started putting up the posts, luckily once some one saw that I was motivated I got plenty of help, and the shade went up in a few days. Afterward we placed the polypots in the pépinière, treated them with fungicide, and we are now in the process of watering and waiting.

Just a small portion of the frame is shaded because there are only 300 plants right now, but there is plenty of room to expand

Placing the polypots

The pépinière will be managed by CAAFBI, and used by EFA (the girls agricultural school) to teach about various cash crops, composting, and nursery management. It will also provide a local resource for cacao, oil palm, and other tree's that are expensive to buy and transport long distances. Right now we are also working on a lot of composting to have enough substrate for 2000 cacao, and 1500 oil palm in December. I know that was a bit boring, but I feel like I needed to post something about the actual work I am doing.