The coffee dreamteam has been reunited!
In this new blog post, I (Jonas) will walk you through my Congolese adventure, starting with Laurens departure. As previously mentioned, the farewell in front of the parish was quite emotional (yes, the hearts of field ecologists are not made out of stone), but there was no time to feel blue on a tuesday. Feelings were kept for sundays.
From then onwards, we started using two off-road motorcycles, which really facilitated the transport to the villages where we would enter the forest. Once arrived in the village, we still had a long way to go before reaching our plots in the forest. These one/two hours hikes were backbracking! We had to climb rocks and trees, to then crawl under trees. One time, we even had to cross multiple streams before arriving at our plot. Thenceforth, we started our search for coffee. After a whole day of ‘running around in the forest’ and a satisfactory collection of samples, we started realising that we still had the long walk home ahead, with all the climbing, crawling and crossing bits. What a bummer, especially in an African storm!
After six weeks of intense field work, we attained our goal, which was celebrated with a banquet with rice, beans and corned beef. Delicious! The days after our little feast, we administratively finished the field work and started preparing my return home. My return trip didn’t go as planned, but after all, what is in Congo?! With an additional tour via Goma, I finally arrived in Belgium on the 11th of March.
Up to the next one!
Jonas