Tea Time

Hi everybody!  It is Sunday night and we have had a cloudy chilly day. The good news is that we also had a nice rain shower!  A real answer to many prayers.  Dad had to work this weekend but it wasn’t too bad as most of the calls came during the day!  We had church this morning, we had some people including our favorite German medical student, over for lemonade after church, then a nice nap before going to Bible quizzing in the late afternoon.  I had a different group again today which makes it difficult to form any relationships but we still had fun together. I continue to be amazed at the Kenyan children’s ability to memorize.  Many of them are well on their way to memorizing 60 verses and getting their prized gold medals.  They are studying the book of Matthew so most of the verses come from it.

I had a fun day yesterday “off the reservation”!  A group of us left about 8 AM for Kericho which is about 2 hours from here and is the tea capital of Kenya.  The tea fields are spectacular! They look like a manicured green on a golf course from afar. With the sun pouring down on the green bushes I could not help but marvel at the good earth the Lord has given us.  The tea farms are really huge plantations. The one we visited named Finleys employs about 15,000 people.  It provides housing for its employees as well as their 20,000 dependents. It also provides medical care and education until Form 1 or approximately the ninth grade.  It is a fair trade company which means that it must abide by stringent rules such as an eight hour work day.  I was truly impressed by the employees we met and the cleanliness of the entire huge area. Drinking a cup of tea will never be the same.  Only the top two leaves are picked off the bush. They must be in the in no factory more than four hours after being picked. There they wither at a controlled temperature before being further processed.  They lost me with all of the jargon of tea processing; just trust me it is complicated!    Not only does Finley’s grow and process tea, another division grows roses, carnations, astremeria, and stock in enormous greenhouses. We were surrounded by millions of roses on Valentine’s Day!  The irony was that we could not buy any!  Finley’s wholesales mostly to the European market  and its flowers reach the streets of London and Amsterdam within twenty four hours of being picked.

After our fun tours we stopped for lunch in Kericho which was a treat!  A quick trip to the “grocery” store topped off the day as we were able to find a few things that are unavailable to us here at the Tenwek “ ducas”.  Hope your weekend was also fun.  We hear that you may be getting some ice storms....surely hope not!

Lots of love,

Mom