Tea Menace in Vihiga [i]

pic; Women taking tea to the banda

A woman hurriedly thumps her bare feet on the newly murramed road to Mudungu Tea Buying Centre. She  was born in 80's, poorly schooled and was married a rivulet away - in Gahumbwa. She confesses that the only town she's been to is Kakamega and it was when they had to connect a matatu on their way to Mumias for a burial. Her hard work localises her today as it shall tomorrow.

She's been chasing the tea transporting lorry and in only a few days has she managed to be on time. The tough clerks from Mudete Tea Factory have been coming and going. Some were rude and she remembers the one who literally refused her harvest claiming that it had many leaves as if tea is a harvest of stalks. "Two young immediate leaves and a stalk!" She cut the walls of the ageing building.

She's late today. The clerk was looking at the last scale reading and was given an option to have hers  put in a sac and be ferried to Nabwani where the lorry was next heading she'll get a carbon copy.  As she occupies a place in the sacs, the clerk is relieved for the kilometer ahead. It would be miles of bloats had she sat with them at the front cabin. Tea picking women smell kivove! They have no time for men - even then, are their men not far away in the cities? In the comfort of the saggy sacs, she shouts to other late coming folks, 'Follow us to Nabwani'. Some feel sorry and decide to head to Wavisero. After Nabwani the single lorry will zoom in the ending day to Wavisero banda.

9 kilos. It would amount to nothing much at month-end. Her poor mother-in-law wouldn't give her half of the proceeds. She is just doing all the slaving because she is a woman of that homestead. Were she picking for a pay no one would take her. Wage labor is Ksh 150.0 per day on the highest at the farms. No youths are interested in that nothingness. Her schooling boy has been telling her to quit such slaving on argument that the small earnings had conditioned her not to imagine else. He's even threatened to destroy the bushes in future.

Weed is overcoming maize today. It has been raining much of late and the tea sprouting fast after a rather dry season at the start of the year. With little time for her garden, she worries today how she will save time for her garden weeding. Perhaps tomorrow she will pick tea and catch the bus on time at Mudungu before which if it does not rain for the evening she will take to weeding... As she thinks about it she's interrupted by footings outside. Paths that trespass to people's homes bring thieves at night. And when she sharpens her ear to listen, she discerns the voices of the women who decided to take tea to Wavisero. What time will they cook for their hungry children? The moon is already out.

"Ku Kuadāmba," she resigns.

Her son can't help. It is not the smoke of the paraffin lamp that irritates his eyes to water the book he is bent at for homework. It is something else deep within watering his eyes. He, one day, might get on top of this shit and claw it bad.

...

Read ⨠ Tea Menace in Vihiga [ii]