His teaching work in Sá da Bandeira allowed him to create a foundation from which he organized a series of trips within Africa, where he had the opportunity to develop his observation skills, collect materials and record the oral and literary traditions of the populations with whom he came into contact. The next year, this research was translated into the publication of his first articles on Africa: ‘Caçada aos elefantes’ (Hunt for Elephants) in Portugal em África. Revista de cultura missionária (1950) and ‘Relatório da excursão de estudo realizada de 23 a 30 de Setembro de 1949’ (Report on Study Excursion from 23-30 September 1949) in Luanda’s Revista de Ensino (1950). That year he also went back to Portugal, returning to his teaching position at the Liceu de Faro.

In 1953 he returned to Lisbon, living in Paço de Arcos and re-establishing the contacts he had made during his student years, while holding the position of permanent teacher at the Liceu de Oeiras, where he remained until 1970. The following year, in 1954, he was invited by his colleague Orlando Ribeiro to collaborate in the Center for Geographical Studies at the University of Lisbon, which had been created the previous year. In 1955, after a proposal by the same friend, he was awarded a grant from the Institute of High Culture for the ordering and publication of Leite de Vasconcelos’ manuscripts, a project he had already begun before his teacher’s death, and that would also be complemented by the publication of a series of biographical notes (he was the author of the 'José Leite de Vasconcelos' entries in Dicionário de História de Portugal, directed by Joel Serrão and in the Enciclopédia Luso-Brasileira de Cultura).

In 1955 he published Contos Populares Portugueses (Popular Portuguese Tales), the result of ethnographic work he would advance over the following years and which resulted in the compilation, organisation and publication, in 1956, of the fourth volume of the Etnografia Portuguesa (Portuguese Ethnography), a collection started by Leite de Vasconcelos, and in the 1957 edition of Adivinhas Portuguesas (Portuguese Riddles). That year he also became assistant to Jorge Dias (1907-1973) in the Missão de Estudos das Minorias Étnicas do Ultramar (Study Tour of Overseas Ethnic Minorities), giving him the opportunity to develop his research and data collection that would allow him to promote and coordinate the execution of important workshops on African ethnography throughout the 1960s, and to structure and consolidate some of the key studies on this issue, particularly those concerning the specific cases of Angola and Mozambique (such as Conto maconde de tema universal, ‘Universal-theme Makonde Tales’ in 1962, Rudimentos de língua maconde, ‘Basics of the Makonde Language’ in 1963 or Os Macondes de Moçambique Sabedoria, Língua, Literatura e Jogos, ‘The Makonde of Mozambique. Wisdom, Language, Literature and Games’ in 1966).

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