Kericho tea plantation – on a more personal note

So far I have been writing about tea from a distance by describing the processes, places and people. This time I want to share a different story. A more personal one. There are some experiences that do not fit into an impersonal narrative and stay with a person for a long time.

One of them is my journey to the tea plantations in the Kericho region of Kenya. It is there that I best understood what tea is really all about before it becomes an infusion, an aroma or a moment of tranquility.

Kericho is not an easy place to be in. Dried river beds, cracked soil, winding and stony roads where even an experienced driver has to stop and think which way to go next. Many plantations may only be accessed with a four-wheel drive vehicle. The road is long and challenging, but it leads exactly to where it all starts: to the tea bushes.

At one of the plantations I observed the traditional manual harvest method of “two  leaves and a bud.” I went into the bushes to try my hand at it. It is not an easy task. It requires concentration, patience and great caution. The pickers move swiftly with bamboo baskets, knowing precisely which leaves are worth picking and which need more time. Then they take what has been harvested to the scales and the leaves go from there straight into the dryer. Even today, manual selection determines the quality of the finest teas.

From this journey I brought back images that I can still see in front of my eyes: the sunrise over the perfectly even rows of bushes, red dust hanging over the roads, silence interrupted only by the conversations of the plantation workers. I also remember an old colonial house with mosquito nets and yellowed issues of National Geographic on the table, as if time had stopped there for a while.

What moved me most, however, was the guestbook. It was filled with signatures of people who had formed the world of tea for decades: merchants, growers, experts. There is a story among the people in the industry that David Henderson, the legend of the Thompson Lloyd & Ewart tea house from London, left his mark in many such guestbooks. I like to think of it as a symbol of continuity: tea created by generations of people who treated it not as a commodity but as a part of life.

When I’m making tea today, my thoughts often go back to Kenya. To this road, bushes and people stooping over the leaves. And I know that every cup is not only about taste, but also about someone’s work, time and attention. Maybe that is why tea is still something more than a beverage to me: it is a moment worth experiencing with mindfulness.