Kiambethu Tea Farm

This past weekend I went to Kiambethu Tea Farm about an hour outside of Nairobi. It was a relief to finally get out of the pollution into some clean air. The farm dates back to 1910 and is one of the first East African tea farms.

The tour of the farm started off in a beautiful garden where one of the owners introduced us to what a tea bush looks like. Next, we were taken in the house and explained the process of tea production over our own cup of tea with homemade biscuits. I learned that within a 24 hour period tea goes from being picked off of a bush to ready for consumption. The oxidation process is that quick. I also learned that the quality of tea is dependent on what part of the leaf is used to make it. The tea that we get in tea bags and even most of the loose leaf tea is blended -- it contains different parts of the leaf and leaves from all over the world that are sold at auction.


After our chat, we walked over to the tea fields and were shown how the leaves are picked. Only the tops of the tea bushes are selected (two leaves and a bud are supposed to be picked together in a bunch). To speed up the process, the women who hand pick tea leaves rest a stick (like the one seen below) in the bush and only pick the leaves that stick up past it. The women are paid about Ksh 6 per kg of tea leaves (only good tea leaves are weighed). The average woman picks about 50 kgs per day adding up to Ksh 300 per day (the equivalent of $3.75). It is incredibly important that quality leaves are picked because when you take them to the factory for auction, you might be told to sift through all your bags of leaves again if any poor quality ones are caught in the mix.


After the tea fields, a resident Keyan guide then took us through an indigenous forest with medicinal trees. Most of the trees we were introduced to cure malaria (which makes me wonder why I'm taking a weekly medicine that causes scary dreams of snakes and the apocalypse). I guess if I get malaria I wouldn't want to trek into the forest for special roots, bark, and leaves that I have to boil.

Other remedies that the trees provide are for childbirth pains which the guide showed to us by saying "in old times men go into forest and get roots to boil so that wife could drink water and have less pain. So much work for man in old times..." I don't know about that. I still think the woman is doing way more work. I would rather put on some hiking boots and go find roots than deal with childbirth.



There were several animals we encountered on our tour of the farm: geese, cows, colobus monkeys (as seeen hanging from the roof of the house above), and four dogs that were pretty friendly.

Our meal at the end of the tour was three courses of pure deliciousness. We started with a vegetable soup followed by a main course of corn in a cheese sauce, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, fresh baked bread rolls and garlic bread, homemade butter, veggie cutlets, and homemade mustard. The dessert menu was quite extensive as well: lemon mousse, homemade vanilla and chocolate icecream, cream sauce drizzled over pineapples, raspberries, and other fruits.

The best part was the cheese tray. I think Europeans and Americans are spoiled because of the massive quantities of cheese we consume. Kenyans don't really eat cheese and it is therefore hard to find in grocery stores. Unfortunately for me, the cheese was served at the end of the meal (at a point where I had already eaten my own body weight in cheese-corn and lemon mousse) and so I couldn't eat as much cheese as I wish I could have. I may return to the tea farm purely for the cheese.

I know that I have spent a disproportionate amount of this post describing food, but if you were eating it, you would understand...