Any time is tea time

Tea has always been a part of my life. I don't think I can imagine life without it, or memories of my large extended family without it- especially my aunties and uncles sitting together and discussing life over CUPS POTS of tea. A hot beverage that brings people together; one to warm up your soul on cold winter nights as you sit at the back of a truck on your way to the village for a family gathering, or even to be drunk in the afternoon in the middle of the blazing hot summers of Southern Africa.

My memories of tea are to do with community. Everyone drinks it and as the common saying goes: 'any time is tea time'. Where I'm from, one drinks tea all the time- maybe that's not quite true- but I can only speak for my family. I'm not sure which side of the family consumes more of this beverage, my mother’s side or my father’s, it is a close tie between the two. When you go to large family gatherings the tea that is served is warm, milky and sugary- just the way that everyone is expected to like it. In my large extended family it’s usually two pots made and sometimes even three varieties- thanks to diabetes and other health restrictions: one pot made with sugar and milk, one without the sugar but the milk and finally one just black tea. Did I mention that you need to know who drinks what lest you cause the onset of some health problem.

A cup of warm milky chai in Eldoret 

That has not always been the case. I remember some darker days in recent past when you drank whatever was offered-well you still do but, there is a bit more on offer these days. Most likely the traditional tea that you were accustomed to was just not there and you drank indigenous herbal tea sourced somewhere in the garden or in the farm from the rural areas (possiblyMoringa tea  or even Makoni tea ) but not in a supermarket, obviously without milk because you could either not find it, or afford it. Lemons became our friends. Somehow I remember always having sugar available even though I don’t usually put sugar in my tea.

In all my few years of drinking tea I was basically clueless as to where it came from and how important it is not only to warm up your soul, but as a liveliood to so many and the social, economic and political implications that tea has on people and nations. Drinking numerous cups of chai and seeing tea plantations for the first time in my life and picking tea inspired the anthropologist/sociologist in me to observe and asks questions about the dynamics that surround the discourse of tea.

Tea is the livelihood of so many people. It is a labour intensive crop that needs to be harvested meticulously with gentle hands as only the bud and the two youngest leaves are picked. Harvest is almost weekly. The people go through the vast plantations bush by bush picking the leaves and putting them into the porous sacks the walk to the delivery point where the tea is weighed and collected by the tea company. Wages are then paid, I believe by virtue of the weight of the sack. All this human labour just for tea I thought, why not mechanize it? The answer I was given was that it would be a terrible idea. The machines do not have the same finesse as the human hand and the quality of tea would be inferior to that picked by people. And then what would you do with all the people who would be out of work?

Tea leaves being collected and ready to go to the tea factory

What about the political? What quantity of tea grown in Kenya gets labelled as being a product of a different country? –I was told that these things do happen although sometimes we choose not to believe that.  Are there governing bodies to regulate the production and the distribution of tea? Who has the highest stake in the tea production, who suffers the most, and to what expense? Dare I even suggest the impact of colonialism in the tea industry in Kenya, lest I be misquoted or misunderstood due to my lack of knowledge of the intricate dynamic that time and history has played on the nation.

                                               
                                              

                                                                                                   

All of those questions buzzed through my mind as we drove through the tea plantations of the Nandi Hills of the Great Rift Valley, stopped at the Tea Hotel in Kericho, visited our host’s grandmother and picked tea in her compound. I think I had and still have more questions than I do answers. I do believe though that I now have a slightly better appreciation of this stimulant called tea- that is until my professors and colleagues here at UNISG succeed to confuse me more about tea.