Kericho, the land of Tea
Trip Start
Feb 20, 2007
1
9
38
Trip End
Jun 2007
Kericho,
Kenya
Friday, March 16, 2007
The scenery on the way was absolutely spectacular; we rose for a while over green mountains until all of a sudden the road curved right and a view of the vast Rift Valley appeared, stretching as far as the blue haze of the horizon. As explained in an earlier entry, the Rift Valley is a crack in the Earth's surface, stretching from Ethiopia to Mozambique, and is responsible for the East African Great Lakes, as well as a lot of volcanic activity in the area. I had seen some of this in Ethiopia and Northern Kenya, but what lay before my eyes here put the other parts of the Valley to shame
Pickin' tea...
. Contrasting with the many shades of green I had seen since Nairobi, with lush, tree-filled vegetation, the plains below me were golden, arid, and flat. Here and there though a rebellious volcano stood, and from our high (2500m) vantage point we could see into their craters. Most of these volcanoes are dormant, but still bubble away deep within. The area also has hot geysers which spray high, hot fountains of water, and several large soda lakes. The lakes measured sometimes up to twenty kilometers in circumference, and were coloured white and pink on their shores, white from soda deposits, and pink from the many flamingos that were swimming there.After crossing the Rift Valley we began to climb again, up, up into cooler, greener lands, populated with trees that often looked European. Once, I looked up from my book, and was astonished to see a herd of about twenty wild zebras grazing in a field by the road. Africa is wonderful in that way, almost every half hour here one sees something new, surprising, or shocking.
Kericho is the biggest tea producing area in Kenya, and supplies many western companies with their tea leaves (Lipton, for example, being one such company - I don't know about Barry's though!), although they are often blended with leaves from other countries
Tea fields (1)
. It was an important town for that reason particularly in colonial times, and it was the British who started the mass tea plantations. About half an hour before I arrived to Kericho town itself I started to see the tea fields, with low, dark green bushes, neatly cut and looking rather like hedgerows. In many of the fields workers were picking the leaves, dressed colourfully, with baskets on their backs - the scene strangely reminded me of images of African-American cotton pickers in the days of slavery. Old compounds consisting of neat rows of small houses were here and there, within the fields, used to house the tea pickers since colonial times.Kericho itself feels very colonial, with run-down English-style houses lining the paved streets. I was perhaps mistaken in perceiving a certain sense of affluence about the place; most people looked well off and were dressed in office clothes, although it must be said Kenyans take particular pride in how they present themselves, it is rarely that one sees a Kenyan man not wearing a well-pressed shirt. There were, however, a few beggars here and there on the streets. I checked into one of the cheapest hotels in town, where I got a clean but compact cell with just about enough room for a bed with a sagging foam mattress. Immediately I went outside and walked around for a few hours. The feeling of walking around not only in nature, but in safety (after Nairobi) was absolute bliss
Tea fields (2)
. I grinned from ear to ear like a fool, greeting everyone I met enthusiastically. I found a lovely little river, shaded by trees which were home to families of monkeys, and sat there for a while, contemplating how much nicer rural life is than urban.The next day I had arranged to be shown around a tea plantation by a charming young man named Watson, a guide with a local hotel. He showed me which leaves one picks, explained that they are pruned twice a year to keep them to about waist-height (they would otherwise grow into trees of about 25 feet), and lots of other interesting pieces of information about the plants and preparation of the neatly bagged tea we love so much back home. I was interested in the work and living conditions of the tea pickers; he told me that they are expected to pick 50-60kg in a day (which usually takes about eight hours), and they are paid about $0.40 per kilo. The picking work is only done once a week, however, and although they have work weeding or pruning on some other days, about half the week is spent without being paid for working.
Most of the rest of my time in Kericho was spent writing the last few entries of this blog. On both nights there I went for a beer in the evening in the bar attached to my hotel. It was a wonderfully dirty and seedy place, dark and filled with half-drunk men. I was surprised, and a little disappointed, however, that never once did one of them come up to talk to me. Anywhere else I have traveled in Africa or Asia I have found it impossible to sit for more than ten minutes alone with a beer before someone comes up to talk to you. Indeed, it is one of my favourite parts of travel, meeting locals, and it is often best done in bars or teahouses. Kenya, however, has proven to be quite different. I hate to draw conclusions from only ten days of travel in five different places here, but Kenyans seemed to be rather closed towards the mzungu (white man). Even when greeted on the street, their body language often seemed subdued and passive, with their heads and eyes bowed a little, and it was rare that a given smile was returned, and when it was the eyes often didn't participate. I cannot help but think that this is perhaps a result of what was a particularly racist colonization by the British for such a long time. I couldn't decide whether the vibes I got were of passive dislike or some sort of inherited quiet respect and feelings of inferiority - I truly hope it is not the latter. I remember feeling the same way, to a lesser extent, at times in India and Burma (both ex-British colonies), and as an Irishman I feel I can somehow identify with all of this. It is something I spent a lot of time dwelling on in Kericho; the themes of British colonialism, Kenyan (perceived) unfriendliness, and my identity as an Irishman. Although we have been independent for almost a century in Ireland I believe we still carry a lot of collective emotional baggage from those years, and as a nation I think we are only just now starting to lose our inferiority complex (largely because of our newfound economic success), but we still have our problems, which manifest themselves so clearly in our horribly excessive drinking culture.
