August 25, 2006 - Thika, Kenya

      I’ll be leaving the Kangari area today, and my host family for the past several weeks. Chris and Irene are wonderful people and took very good care of me – constantly going out of their way to help me get around and make connections. If I didn’t mention it in the gallery, Irene’s brother John works at Masonic Home in Bloomington, MN and cares for my Grandma. He is an incredibly kind, compassionate and patient man – and takes very good care of my Grandma. When he heard I was going to Africa, he told me he was from Kenya and asked if I would visit his family. Tomorrow we will leave here for Usenge – Chris’ home village. We will spend a few days in Usenge, travel as far as Kisumu, spend the night in Kisumu then on to Kisii to visit and spend a few days with John and Irene’s family.

     Chris is the plant manager for a local tea factory. It’s really an amazing operation – and there are 54 others throughout the tea regions of Kenya. As I had been living "on site" at a tea factory, I got a pretty intimate look at the Kenyan tea industry. If you have looked at the pictures from Nduti, you’ve noticed it’s a very beautiful area. Rolling hills (big hills), very green, very lush. The hills are checkered with tea farms for as far as you can see. At first glance I thought these people must be doing very well – an area so rich in a cash crop, and factories located within the villages employing factory workers as well as supporting the tea farmers. This area of Kenya supplies a large percentage of the world’s tea – these guys have it made! I received an email from a friend (I’ll leave your name out Deb), saying she had read about how poor these tea farmers were, and how Americans and Europeans were actually making most of the money on the tea. I immediately responded, assuring her that this was incorrect – as I was in the heart of Kenyan tea country, living at a tea factory – and if conditions were that bad, I would certainly know about it. (Not just one – I actually got both feet in my mouth!).

     As I spent more time in the villages, and in the farms I noticed that for all of the tea they were growing they didn’t seem to be doing very well. Some had nicer homes than others, but most were the mud/dung homes I have seen all over – very small. The children are often dirty and dressed in ragged clothes. There were no cars or trucks – a few had bicycles. I couldn’t figure it out? They have these lush farms of tea – a year-around crop, fertile soil, and good precipitation – why weren’t they doing better? Keep in mind, these tea farmers are a big part of the "middle-class" of this region. If they were in America, they would all have a mini-van and an SUV and be mortgaged to the gills, but living a comfortable life. I sat with Chris after touring the tea processing operation and ran the numbers. For ease of reading I will covert everything from Kenya shillings to US dollars – the current exchange is about 73 K shillings/dollar. The factory has large trucks that drive around the area and pick up the tea leaves from the farmers at distribution points. The tea leaves are dried, chopped, ground, fermented, dehydrated, sifted for grade and bulk packaged. The 50 kg bags are loaded onto trucks and driven to the city of Mombassa (the major Kenyan coast city) – where the bulk tea is sold at auction. Lipton (UK based), controls over 50% of the buying market, thus play a major role in determining the selling price of the tea. The tea that is purchased in Mombassa is shipped to the UK or Egypt for blending, packaging and marketing. Here is how the money flows (trickles) down to the farmers. First, the farmers are paid 12 cents per kg of tea leaves as they are collected – more or less something to sustain them during the season. The factory is basically operated as a cooperative, and pays a dividend to each farmer at the end of the year based on the prices they received for the tea. Last year the factory averaged about $2 per kg of bulk tea at auction. They took 41.25 off the top for overhead and profit, which for the size of the operation seemed very reasonable. This leaves .75 / kg to be distributed to the farmers. One kg of tea leaves yields on average ¼ kg of bulk tea – so divide the .75 by 4, and the farmer’s dividend is about .19/kg.

     Of course the farm sizes vary, but the average size farm is currently ½ acre. Each generation average farm sizes decrease as land is family owned, and divided among the male children – so your grandfather may have had 25 acres, but that land was divided among your 8 uncles – each getting 3 acres, your father’s 3 acres is divided between your 5 brothers, each about ½ acre. If you have 3 sons…. I think you get the picture. Fewer of the people are able to continue farming the family land, more must go out and buy other land to farm, or find other employment. Back to the story – each ½ acre farm will have about 2000 tea bushes. Each tea bush will produce on average 1.1 kg of tea leaves per year, thus each farm will produce about 2200 kg of tea leaves. So the farmer is paid his .12/kg at harvest for an annual total of $264. He then receives his dividend of .19/kg for an annual total of $418. The farmer’s gross for the year is $682. That comes out to about $1.87 per day. $1.87/day divided by a family of 6 = poverty.

     Granted, the cost of living is much lower here than in the US, but feeding your family on $1.87/day is pretty tough. Here are a few prices in the market: loaf of bread .30, dozen eggs = $1, 1 kg of sugar = .82, 1 kg of corn flour = .79. These people resilient, tough, and very resourceful. Most grow some vegetables and fruit, and keep some livestock for their own consumption for at least part of the year, they gather firewood for cooking, they walk kilometers to get water – even so, how can you feed a family on $1.87/day? This does not take into account school fees (which can be as high as $500 for secondary school), medical expenses, cell phone (which most have – there are no land lines), clothing etc. There is no electric, gas or water bill, because there is no electricity, gas, water or sewer. There is no entertainment budget (there is no entertainment), there is no such thing as vacation. If one of these people has been out of their village, it was to go to a hospital, or attend a funeral. The toys you see in the photos are it. There are no balls, dolls, legos or crayons, much less MP3 players and video games. They make soccer balls out of plastic bags and twine, they draw a checker board in the dirt and play with bottle caps (Fanta orange & Coke if you were wondering).

     I can’t tell you how many times I sat at the kitchen table at home looking at the bills, then I would look at my paycheck and wonder how in the world I was going to make ends meet. I cried because I had no shoes – then I met a man with no feet. I can speak for no one but myself, but it is another of the hundreds of experiences I have had here that have really put my problems into perspective. When I look at these people and how they struggle to survive - I don’t have any problems.

     Here are some other occupations (which are very limited), and average incomes:

- Factory worker $900/year $2.50/day

- House boy/girl (cooking/cleaning/gardening) $1275/year $3.50/day

- Driver (truck, van, bus) $1800/year $5.00/day

- Watchman (security guard) $915/year $2.50/day

- Secretary $1800/year $5.00/day

- Bank teller $2500/year $7.00/day

     Somehow, they manage. I have examined literally thousands of kids between Tanzania and Kenya and they are generally in good health. The people in the villages are also generally happy and at peace with their surroundings – which again leads me ask "what exactly is poverty?" The dictionary uses words like "lack", "shortage", "deficiency", and "poor quality" – so by dictionary definition, the shoe fits. But if people are happy and healthy – they enjoy an incredible sense of community (they can’t afford to do much else) – are they living in poverty? I have always equated "poverty" with "suffering and misery"– and these people do not seem to be suffering or miserable. They certainly struggle, but every culture has "struggles". Their "standard of living" is an order of magnitude below that most people living in America or Europe – but does that define "poverty"? And is the extreme contrast caused by them having too little, or us having too much? Please do not misunderstand – I am by no means minimizing their plight, implying that these people "have it made", or do not need help. I’m just sharing the changes in the way I look at the world, as I walk through it. God really does provide.

SHINE!

brad