Tea Time

Among the many small joys of living in Kenya, tea time has become one of our favorites. While Starbucks is the daily beverage addiction of choice for many Americans, tea is the ruler of the roost around Kenya. 

Each day at work and school around 10:30am, we are given our daily serving of chai - the swahili word for tea. Unlike typical tea consumed in America, it is steeped in whole milk, not water, and served with about 2-3 heaping teaspoons of sugar (sometimes ever more)! This preparation and calorie content makes the tea more of a mid-morning snack than simple beverage, and it's one that we've really grown to love. Another difference is that Kenyans also serve things to the brim, literally, so our drinking usually results in some initial spillage.

The daily up of chai we enjoy

Kenya is one of the world's top producers and exporters of tea, and it a vital part of their economy. The crops are mainly grown by small scale farms that employ workers who pick the tea by hand. Kenyans picked up the daily habit from the British colonization in the early 1900s and it has stuck ever since. So cheers, to tea time here in Kenya.

Tea fields we saw in the highlands on our
bus trip from Nairobi to Kisumu