Category: News From The Field

Two years ago, Cibening village received some fund from PNPM Mandiri Perdesaan (National Program for Community Empowerment “Mandiri Pedesaan”) to fix the road (from main road to the village). The road was not finished completely because the fund was limited. The road was hardened by rocks only and without asphalt so when the rain came, the road was damaged again.

When the hot season starts, Cibening village turns to dry and the soil becomes hard. GoldTeak guardians collected rocks from the hill to harden the road between the village and the plantation.

Collecting plastic garbage

One of the CSR programs for the children at SD Cibeureum is “Go Green”, children learn how to reuse, reduce and recycle the things that they used. Children always pick up the plastic garbage wherever they found it.

Rainy season has given a lot of water to the trees. All teak trees, mahogany, Acacia and fruit trees look green. All trees have young leafs and look healthy. Rainy season did not make any problem to the plantation, this year only one teak tree was fallen because of hard wind. The well is full with water and makes the workers happy, and trees start flowering and fruiting too.

Rains did not damage the road; it is still good although it does not have much sand. The temperature is between 36 – 43 Celcius.

Cibening village will have a new Mosque; the land was a donation from Mr. Zaini. Village people included GoldTeak workers; they help to build on Fridays on their day off.

GoldTeak started to plant the trees in 1995 in Cibening village in 2 Hectares land, small piece of fields for the business but big ground to start. The plantation project was successful and after 2 years GoldTeak continued planting the trees (local teak trees and Solomon teak trees) on 20 hectares of land.

More knowledge made the project even more successful too, not many problems in maintaining and managing the plantation, and in 2005, GoldTeak opened another 18 Hectares land and planted the trees again, not only teaks this time around, mahogany and acacia but also some fruit trees like durian, mango, orange and rambutan.

Now, the trees grow very well and GoldTeak has another plan, to start a new business. After planting trees and now GoldTeak prepare the new business, create wood products. All of the business is to create a micro economy in Cibening village. From the community and for the community.

Goldteak plantation is located in Cibening village, we have to travel about four kilometers from the main road, pass the village and go up the hill. There are two bridges between the main road and the village. The bridges made of iron and concrete, cross over a small river. Most of the time, the river has little water, but in rainy season it will be full of water and sometimes the flood covers the land and the bridges.

Recently, Cibening village has been developing, many small trucks come to the village bring materials for building houses, usually small trucks come to bring crops like banana and cassava to the markets. 

There was heavy rain last month, the soil around the two bridges moved and made some damages to one of them. Now, the bridge is under construction, some donators donated materials like iron and cement and people hand in hand to fix the bridge.

GoldTeak always takes part in building or fixing the bridges, this time GoldTeak not only donated money to buy cement, but also sending the workers to collect the stones and fixing the bridge together with other people in the village. We hope the bridge will be completed this end of the month.

Visiting the teak trees at the pilot project at Bumisari village is always an exciting experience. The location is up the hill and it is about 6 km from the main road. Small truck or pick up or even the motor bike are good option to go there than the car. The trip was like an off road journey for about one hour.

Passing through the Palm Oil plantation and tea plantation is a nice scenery before we reach the teak plantation, the plantation is nearby a village. The teak trees now already 9 years old, they look healthy. Some of the trees are growing fast but some are still regular size. Hot season make the trees look dry but it is natural condition where the sun rise will reach the trunks and the soil too. The leaves are falling and soon after the rain is coming they change green. Local teaks dominate all the plantation. Pak Ganda, the guardian who take care the Bumisari teak plantation, is always happy when pak Zaini, the land manager comes to bring his salary and medicine for his family.

Visiting the project at Cibening village is another interesting trip. Driving an open jip with bumpy road is a challenge. The plantation still green from a distance, from west to east hill and cover almost whole the hill. The trees look healthy and big, most of the trees grow well. The teak trees and the fruit trees are blooming and fruiting. Acacia trees have their first flowers, land is covered by leaves and flowers and also seeds. Water is getting less but fortunately, workers can use the water from the water spring and the well.

This month, SD Cibeureum had some guests from Jakarta, they are two students from Jakarta International School. Omar and his sister Mae are American, they visited SD Cibeureum because they heard that the school has received many awards from many science competition. They came for a friendship, they interacted with other students in English and Indonesian. Omar and Mae prepared some games and gave presents to the students who could answer their games. They also donated tooth pastes and tooth brushes for the students.

This is the first time for SD Cibeureum to have a visit from foreign students, the students are very happy and they were motivated to learn English. At the end of the visit Omar and Mae promised to tell about SD Cibeureum to their friends in Jakarta.

Goldteak opens the opportunity to SD Cibeureum students to become global citizen.

Indonesia’s Rainy Season

Due to the geographical position of the country, Indonesia has a monsoon climate, which affects the seasons change in Indonesia. Seasonal changes occurred in Indonesia by the wet and dry season with a unique natural phenomenon.

The rainy season in Indonesia took place in October and April. The rainy season in Indonensia caused by gusts of West Monsoon winds that blow from the Asian continent to continent of Australia the maximum pressure yeng minimum pressure. West Monsoon winds bring much moisture, so that in most parts of Indonesia suffered the rainy season.

In big cities and in areas deforested often disastrous monsoon flooding. This disaster impacts as many houses submerged, even some loss of property and lives of people affected by the disaster.

Movement to plant trees in Indonesia began to show an increasing trend. Seen from a variety of reforestation movement that’s encouraged by the private sector, the media, students, and community. The project also GoldTeak serve as a pioneer for green initiatives in the area Cibening.

General Condition of Land:

In general the condition of teak trees and fruits are in good condition.

On Village Update

Cibening society working together to collecting stones to repair buildings hit by floods in surrounding areas due to heavy rain in December and January.

For the young trees which planted in February 2009, they are thirty months old now, and about 10 or 12 meters tall, but for the young trees which planted at the end of March 2009 they are about 7 or 8 meters tall. The shortest trees are the trees which replanted at the end of April, because they did not survived from teak decease or hot weather. In 1 or 2 years, the shortest trees will be as tall as the tallest ones. In a growing period the trunk will be bigger and taller and the root become stronger, especially for a “Solomon” type where the tree will grow high with less leaves. Small branches will disturb the growing of the trunk, so unnecessary branches should be cut.

It is necessary to look after the soil, it should be free from gulma or weed around the tree, this will give the tree and its root receive enough nutrition and sunrise.

All trees, teak, acacia, mahogany, durian, mango and durian have received the same treatments, giving insecticide, fungicide or fertilizer if necessary. Water is also important, although teak is a strong tree but during the growing period it needs a lot of water.

Who does all of those things? Off course Guardians, do they live as well as the trees do? Pak Parid is one of two supervisors in Goldteak plantation. He and his family have been living in plantation since Goldteak opened the first 20 ha teak plantation in Cibening more than 7 years ago. He is a role model of a good, active, diligent and responsible guardian, more than that he also started to be entrepreneur. When he moved to the plantation, he did not bring anything but his wife and 5 from 8 children they have.

Goldteak provided him with a bamboo house and small yard around the house. Every day, when he has a break time of after finishing the job he takes care his goats, chicken and his yard, now he has 3 goat houses with more than 5 goats and lambs, he has more than 30 chicken and a yard full with fruit and vegetable. Two of his sons, Kusnadi and Dede P, have followed his step and become entrepreneurs too, they also have several goats. Before Lebaran, Dede P sold his goats and bought a second hand motor bike that would help him and family travel to places.

Some of the guardians have tried to follow pak Parid’s way, but will they be like pak Parid? We have to be optimist because all teachers at SD Cibeureum and Goldteak will help the guardians and all children in Cibening village to have a good future.

August 17th is Indonesian Independence Day, SD Cibeureum students and Cibening people celebrated on August 15. All people came together to SD Cibeureum school to see the games, there were several traditional games like climbing betel nut tree to get presents, running by using rice sack, taking coin on the fruit, putting the chalk into bottles, and all students got presents.

August 19-20th happens to be a Muslim Eid festival after Ramadhan. Almost all of the villagers celebrate this festival by visiting relatives and their neighbors. 

In the mid of August, the weather is very hot with strong wind. It hadn’t been raining for 4 weeks and the guardians helped the land to get water. People in Cibening collected the river water and put it in containers, the water resource has filled up with water. It is expected that the water can be used until the next rain falls.

Every year, when farmer start to open the area for farming, they usually burn the land. The farmers don’t have money to pay the workers to open their land so they burn it, after that they use the hoes to open the land, and early rainy season they can start to plant the rice. This is one of problems in plantation or farming area. Sometimes, the fire can not be controlled because there is hard wind or no water supply available. 

The other problem is because the area of farming and plantation huge and there is not enough people to handle. All trees are burnt will be replanted in December in rainy season.