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- Jan 31, 2021, 1:53pm
- ⛅ 26 °C
- Altitude: 2,099 m
- KenyaNandiKapchorua0°5’45” N 35°16’38” E
Tea
January 31, 2021 in Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C
Haha! Whenever I don't plan anything the best things happen. Should I go north, west or south from Eldoret? Hmm, let's go south because there might be some tea and coffee growing. Nandi Hills looks like a very little visited region and turns out to be a tea growing centre even though the main region is supposed to be around Kericho. Coming from remote lake Turkana on this elevated plateau west of the rift valley the civilization shock is still frustrating me. Housing, agriculture, people wherever I look. So strange that it is basically just a day's drive away! But I enjoy the climate very much with 25-30 °C during the day and beautifully cold nights! On this Sunday it is difficult to step by at any tea plantation because yeah, it's Sunday. I stop a lot for picturing these vast, brightly green glowing slopes of low but dense tea bushes. Today the air is clear and the colours are driving me crazy (thanks to polarized sunglasses)!
Still, I manage to find a shift manager at a tea estate who explains the basic process and answers my maaany questions. They used to be FairTrade-certified - the logo on their road signs lured me here - but not anymore due to some "issues". They all here produce classic broken black tea and I learn that around 98 % of it is exported to UK and India even though the Kenyans are good tea drinkers. Here you find the Kenyan "Chai" in every corner throughout all tribes which is a rich infusion of this very black tea in 50/50 of milk and water with a lot of sugar and chai massala - a herb mix of mostly ginger and sometimes cloves and cardamom. Delicious and cheap, perfect for each short road stop. The Samburu say that they drink two cups of that in the morning and don't require anything else during the whole day. Why they export to India nobody knows because if not the Indians, who else is more famous for black tea? There are many estates which provide their workers with sweet tiny houses and also schools! The companies invest in the villages and also supply neighbouring communities with schooling even though they might not be directly connect to the estate. I still did not figure out if these estate are private or governmental because it makes the impression of being the latter. No private company would voluntarily invest in the society, that's not how capitalism works ;-) The estates harvest also their own firewood from dedicated forest patches of eucalyptus, pine and ceder (?) for the drying process of the tea leaves. There are some tea patches which are plucked by hand and others by machines. But at this estate 70 % of the processed tea leaves comes from neighbouring private farmers. I see green tea bushes and also bushes of a violet variety which I find pretty fascinating. Again, I learn a lot but let this just be the beginning of this very afternoon ...Read more