TAN: The Mufindi of Yesteryear

Today we have a special treat in the form of a tour of Mufindi given by Geoff Fox. Directly after breakfast we set off. Our first stop is at the coffee growing on the farm. Geoff explains that he is growing Arabica coffee, the other drinking coffee variety being Robusta. The fruit on the coffee bush is picked when it turns cherry, or a dark crimson color. Inside the fruit are two coffee beans that are encased in sucrose mucilage. After being picked, the fruits are pulverized to remove the outer hull and the beans are placed in vats to ferment the mucilage coating so it sloughs off. The raw beans are then ready to be dried and roasted. Currently the market for coffee is incredibly low with growers getting about $0.50 per kilogram of beans. Vietnam has come out of nowhere to take the spot of second largest producer of coffee, behind Brazil. There will be slight fluctuations in the pricing but short of a major cataclysm it will never reach the levels it did previously

Next on the tour is a stop at Geoff’s trout hatchery. In July he purchased 25,000 Rainbow Trout eggs for $1000. Currently he has about 10,000 fingerlings. The day that Julie and Gabriel arrived, he lost about 7,000 of them. This morning he has surmised that the meal he has been feeding them has gone bad. The meal was made from small fish from Lake Tanganyika to the north. These fish are pretty fatty and Geoff figures the fat has gone rancid, poisoning his trout. He is switching over to another fish that is not fatty in hopes of keeping more of his trout alive to stock the lakes and streams on the Farm.

We continue on in search of tea pluckers plying their trade. At our first stop with a good vista, Chantal realizes that she only has one battery with a 45-minute charge. Geoff and I go back and grab the other battery. When we rejoin the others, Geoff informs Chantal that as punishment for forgetting the battery, she will have to sing some Edith Piaf songs after supper.
Our journey takes us all over the dusty roads of Mufindi. The vibrant green tea fields are interspersed with dense stands of montane woodland. Every place you look is more stunning than the last. As part of his responsibilities as the manager of the Brooke Bond Tea Estate, Geoff had to pick out particularly robust bushes that would serve as parents to be cloned. He is very fond of the story of the first time he had to complete this task. He took his wife Vicki along to help out and while he staked out 200 plants, she lost interest after about 10. Over the course of the next few years, the bushes that Geoff had selected were all deemed unsuitable, while one of the ones Vicki had selected went on to be a star parent. Geoff proudly takes us to the field where the V1 plant is. We get out and spend a little while hunting for the plant. Eventually Geoff decides he has found it.

The venerable V1 plant . . . maybe.

The escarpment and the valley floor 2000 feet below. The paper mill and the town built to house the mill workers. Both have been shut down for the last eight years. It is cheaper to import paper than it is to get the chemicals needed to manufacture it locally.

All of us looking perturbed at the prospect of leaving this beautiful place.

Some giant tree ferns. These ones were well over 15 feet high.

Julie and Chantal try their hand . . . er head at carry things in the local way with a small donut fashioned out of grass. Wild cucumbers.

It is getting on toward lunchtime and we are making our way over to the Rift Valley Escarpment. We have our meal while looking down on the Rift Valley floor some 2000 feet below. The view is breathtakingly spectacular. After we are finished, the hunt for tea pluckers continues. We come across some before too long. They are more interested in what we are doing than getting on with their work which makes natural looking photographs a tad difficult. There has been lots of trouble with investigative journalist looking for examples of child labor amongst the tea growers, consequently our request for some close-up shots is denied.

We return from our journey in time for Geoff to get on the radio at 4 p.m. for the afternoon inter-camp communication. We are left to entertain ourselves, which after getting some captures set up we set into with vigor. The afternoon’s divertissement is Croquet. Geoff comes down to officiate the warm-up round. All four of us play another round before getting the next round of captures set up. We lose Julie to her project, so Chantal, Gabriel and I continue to play. Chantal manages to trounce the both of us in four straight games. Fortunately it becomes too dark to play.
We dine on a delicious supper of stuffed eggplant. After dinner, Chantal continues her winning streak and bests Gabriel at pool. Our projects are calling so we all head back to our cabins to work. The power goes off around 11 p.m. at which point I have another piping hot bath and head for bed.