Tree Planting has been taking place on the land of 4 families whose children attend the Kids Joy nursery here at college. The trees were paid for by voluntary donation from each nursery child’s family, and the land for planting on was offered by the 4 families.
The trees were planted by teams of college students and staff, plus the nursery child linked to the land where the planting was being done.
All 4 of the families who offered land are farmers, growing a mixture of food crops and cash crops. The cash crops tend to be coffee and maize, plus one family also grew vanilla for sale.
As well as cash crops, the food crops that I spotted for home consumption were maize, pumpkin, cassava, pineapple, beans, passion fruit, banana (plantain and matoke varieties), vanilla, papaya and ssechunga (big orange, as opposed to muchunga which is little orange). I expect there were more foods that I didn’t spot.
The trees being planted were spread across the land, to provide boundary markers and shade protection, and the varieties were all indigenous trees. Some were also fruit trees.
The tree planting was done as a demonstration of local response to the fight against deforestation and climate change. It will be repeated every year unless the parents want to do it more frequently.
