The Bonus Tea party, Inyali farmers uproot tea bushes

Two leaves and a bud

When I went to see my good friend Stanley Gazemba at the Stony Hills of Maragoli, I got lost. I had dismissed his concern for this possibility when we talked over the phone.

He had suggested that he post a boda-boda rider at Mbale town to act as a guide, but I convinced him technology had overrun those old ways, and with Google Maps sent via Whatspp I would locate him in no time.

The map was accurate it placed us on Mpaka road, the most direct route to get to Inyali on the slopes of Maragoli hills.

Poor roads hampering harvest

What was a decent rural marram road for a while suddenly scaled off, into red mud, most of the attempt at putting the road washed off the hill sides. The road had no traces of use by previous motorists and boda boda tracks skidded into each other in a criss-cross of paths.

A gulley, or the beginning of it had split the road that fell off a cliff down a river beneath. I braked, warning Nyarsindo, that if we went down this path we would lose the car.

I called Gazemba, humbled by my lack of foresight and he told me not to dare take that road. The Serem Mpaka road had just been recently rehabilitated thanks to donor funds, but was the worst road in the area.

I should instead double round and approach his village from Kisangula. This was a better road, it skidded on tarmac across the greenery of Maragoli. Here thicket rose from all over you could tell it rained everyday. The residents grew tea, bushes and bushes of it spread on either side.

The maragoli spirit

Old collection bandas lay in a derelict state along the winging paths that had these happy people. When we stopped to ask for directions, they retorted, ‘You are on the right path, just keep at it and then u-p-a-n-d-e’.

It was climbing alright until we got lost again, and had to drive back, short of fuel and late for Gazemba’s party. When we did meet the legendary writer, he was listening to Rhumba right out of the radio of his mobile phone, letting the music surround his mane of Rasta, and give him an aura.

He was in his element among the people who went to school with him, his sly cousins, and local returnees from Nairobi who switched between Maragoli and Swahili for our benefit.

Dismal Bonus

We were looking for the story of tea, and had heard some farmers were uprooting bushes that have made the Kenya Tea Development Agency Ltd. (KTDA) the largest manufacturer in Kenya, with a turnover of Kes 79 billion.

There has been a disquiet among farmers following the dismal bonus declared by some factories of KTDA. Tea processing factories affiliated with the Agency across the country have been rocked by chaos as farmers reject low pay for supplies made in the ended crop season.

This has been explained by variations of the quality of tea and the inefficiency of some of the factories that are now required to go fully green under the new European Union (EU) rules. The new EU market law will ban sale of goods linked to the destruction of forests, a cause of climate change, starting January 2025.

KTDA has also been unable to sell tea due to a disastrous policy of price setting by the Kenya Kwanza administration in a bid to influence the market that has backfired.

KTDA, National Chairman, Enos Njeru while acknowledging that some factories have been negatively impacted by the policy expressed optimism that the farmers’ fortunes will change for the better as the government had opened the window for direct sales and the minimum reserve price had been removed.

Enslaved and insulted

On the ground, farmers feel insulted by the peanuts they have received and are contemplating tearing down the green bushes.

“When I was young, in this area, we used to have coffee. Our fathers grew tea and left the coffee for the women. My mother used to send me to collect her dues from Lunyerere, they would give me a huge bag of pennies,” Gazemba said.

“But now that I think back I think she was just embarrassed by how much they were paying her, she ended up uprooting. The last time I took my tea to KTDA that is how I felt, I felt insulted,” he said.

When we talked to the farmers we learned that tea was unprofitable here because of the dysfunction in government.

Government manufactured poverty

For instance due to the bad roads KTDA transport did not come to collect tea in the afternoons when it was sure to rain, they instead collected tea by 8am.

This meant that farmers could not pluck enough tea as an ideal harvest takes several hours into late afternoon.

To maintain quality and humidity, KTDA insists on plucking only two leaves and a bud. If they get an extra leaf in your batch it is instantly condemned and you are forced to sell to private mills at a discount.

The private mills lurk around like literally vultures preying on the desperation of the farmers. We saw how they braved the afternoon rains and picked up the tea that KTDA had left behind uncollected, of course at a discount.

Free markets are gamed

The farmers claim, although unverified that the scales of the collection centers are also rigged. They swear by their old gods that when they measure their tea at home, they weigh heavier, and that the shed off some wait at the collection centers.

“In tea, everyone who does not grow tea makes money, from the muzungu, the local leaders,, the directors, the brokers, the private, the lorries, it is just the farmer who gets nothing,” one of the farmers said.

They say, since they have to pluck only the two leaves and a bud, in record time before the transport lorries leave, they can barely make enough to meet the cost of fertilizing the bushes and hiring pluckers.

Meanwhile in their pay slips, the factories deduct money that is supposed to be allocated to build the access roads, that should allow the farmers to actually earn a living.

Some of the farmers are switching to growing nappier grass and rearing cows instead. To me it feels like relief, that somehow in the fullness of time, the inconsistencies of colonial agriculture will stop making sense. A country that is 80 percent desert should not be growing flowers for Dutch noses, Tea for the Kings’ people and hybrid maize for the surplus American corn empire, yet we have mouths to feed.