Discovering a genuine tea farm

This cloudy but pleasantly warm morning, we drove up the hills to Kiambethu farm in Limuru province at an elevation of some 2000 meters. Fiona Vernon – whose grandfather planted tea there in 1918 – came out to welcome us to her spot of paradise, situated in a particularly lush and green part of Kenya.

We were a bit early, so I had ample time to stroll around in her marvellous garden, with flowers that we in Europe can only buy expensively in a few exclusive shops. The colourful birds were rejoicing at collecting their sweet nectar. The gardener was busy cleaning away the weeds but happy to take a break and tell me about all the different plants they were growing.

When the rest of the group had all arrived, Fiona started the tour around her nowadays much smaller tea plantation. She explained how her grandfather, A.B. McDonell, had bought the farm and was the first person to grow, make and sell tea commercially in Kenya – now one of the country’s biggest exports.

That was approximately at the same time as Karen Blixen and her husband, the Swedish Baron Bror Blixen, started their coffee farm not far away. Their life story is told in Karen’s autobiography “Out of Africa”, later turned into a movie, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.