CHEF KABUI
APRIL 9, 2021
A TEA OF REPENTANCE & LIBERATION
I have been thinking a lot about the story of tea this Spring. That is one of the incidental outcomes of the pandemic as we are stuck at home. That idea of being forced to spend a lot of time at home, means that we have enough time to look not only outtward but also inwards. That inward spirit got me looking at my backyard with different eyes. I noticed that I have a lot of eddible plants that grow wild.
The Spring seems to be just burgeoning with different species that are eddible within two weeks into Spring. Among the list of plants I found are chickweed, Dandelion, wild Blackberries and wild onions. There are two wild vegetables that are consumed in Kenya but whose name I am yet to find out.
I have enjoyed some of these early vegetables but that is not my focus today. My interest was the kind of tea I could make by incorporating some ingredient from my backyard. My search yielded Dandelion, Lemon Balm and young wild Blackberries leaves which made a great base for my tea. I added a few Blackberries, Tumeric, honey, fresh squeezed Pineapple and a fresh squeezed Lemon juice to complete this sumptuous drink.
I loved the floral flavors but also whole idea of creating a recipe that truly borders a repetance brew. I used the word brew because many of us have literally become drank with naivety of the consequences of our mindless consumption that is either the goal or consequence of capitalism. But the word brew touches on a another brew that is destroying the youth of my village.
As if to offer my libation to neutralize the two demons of addiction now emblematic of food, well and also brew: Injustice, I also decided on a brew that is a counter to the errant drink of the traditional tea. My tea turned out to be a thrill even to my children, who also happen to be my harshest critics.
As we enjoyed the tea, I took the opportunity to teach them about the history of tea. It was an eye-opener to them just like it was for me the first time I heard it. I especially couldn't believe how the tea leaves my mother used to cook for us during my youth in that magical land of Gathingira, the village of my birth, had their roots in China. It might be worth noting that my favorite metal cup with a nice glaze to it was also Chinese; and so was the ubiquitous neatly folded handkerchief I kept in my pocket as a village etiquette with British roots but more driven by my regular sneezing that was probably exacerbated by the increasing foreign diet in our food. Looking back, there were tell tell signs of a dietary coup in the offing. The coup had four things at it’s root and they were food, textile, God and language. Britain led the coup but China was a loyal sidekick.
The most interesting bit is how and who was responsible for spreading the tea leaves across the world to far of places including my little remote village.
The story started with the British explorers to China. Among the many things that fascinated these British explorers about China was gun powder and tea. Both would change the course of the world in ways few would have imagined in the early 1800s. Once the British explorers tasted the Chinese brew they were hooked. They took some back to Britain and soon after tea become the most popular drink in Britain.
The wealthy class couldn't get enough of the new drink. One has to bear in mind that beer was the default drink for workers due to the widespread problem of water contamination. Before long, politics of tea cropped into the trade. Britain realized that it could not sustainably keep buying the Chinese tea using silver and gold, the only two means of payment that the Chinese were willing to accept. They Chinese were also not willing to sell their cash cow by selling transplants of tea to the British, or anyone else for that matter.
The British were so adamant on growing their own tea that they finally decided to send a spy to go and steal the tea plants and sneak it out of the country. That was no easy feat. It took a lot of skills, courage and guile. The task was especially complications by the fact that the Chinese did not allow any of the foreign traders beyond the trading ports. Tea could probably rank as the first political drink of global proportion.
The story starts when the British East Indian Company decided to engage Scotish botanist named Robert Fortune in the espionage. In 1848, Fortune set out for a journey that would land him in Wu Si Shan Hills where he successfully managed to obtain the secrets of growing and processing tea. That is still the biggest espionage case in world history in terms of cash value.
The second tactic by the British was the introduction of opium in China in order to addict the Chinese with a commodity that the British had easy acess to. In so doing, the British would get opium from their colonies in India and buy tea with it instead of the more rare and expensive precious metals the Chinese were demanded as currency.
The Chinese did not fall for the trick laying down. The two countries went to war that is popularly known as the Boxer rebellion. The stakes were so high that it took a second Boxer rebellion to subdue the Chinese enough for British comfort. The chinese lost the war and opium flooded the Chinese market. One of the lingering consequences of the Chinese loss still lingers and continues to this day. That consequences was that of dividing the Chinese country into three parts of Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. That the seperation of Hong Kong was for only 50 years comes as no consolation to global security. Yet, it is the seperating China and Taiwan that carries the greatest source of global insecurity as it pits America and Chinese, two nuclear powers, against each other.
Once the Chines lost the war, opium dens become a common place in China as more and more Chinese became addicted to the drug. Many injustices happened and many lives were lost before the original Chinese drink could find its way to my village. Unbeknownst to my young taste bugs, I was partaking in the spreading the impact of the tea heist simply by drinking my mother’s brew. That simple and unassuming plant had made British East Indian company and Britain in general a lot of money, power and fueled its efforts to build a global empire. As evidence, we still call the chinese tea, British tea. British breakfast can't be complete without a brew made with the Chinese leaves.
Large areas in my region still grows tea to this day. The crops uses a disproportionate amount of land , leaving smaller area for growing food for local consumption. That fact of growing tea with chemical fertilizers, consuming sugar and eating gluten in bread for breakfast was a perfect recipe for the making of a regular running nose. The Chinese could at least take solace for their loss of their tea monopoly by appreciating the growth in their handkerchief market.
Tea gained such a stronghold amongst some farmers in my region that it was not a rare occurrence to have farmers growing tea on their farms but going to the market to buy food that would readily grow on their land but had opted to give tea priority over other foods.
Tea also uses chemical fertilizers that damage the ecosystem.
Apparently the ripples of the espionage that took place in 1848 are being felt thousands of miles from Wi Si Shan hills or Britain. While no Boxer rebellion has yet broken out in my village, the damaged ecosystem has been equally destructive. That damage is exacerbated by the unjust market that favor the foreign consumers to the detriment of the farmers of economically less powerful countries. That economic ecosystem of today is what we call global economy. Like the opium dens of old China, dens are now becoming common place in my home region.
Though these dens don't typically sell opium, the toxic cheap alcohol being sold is having somewhat similar results as that of the opium on the Chinese back in 1850s. It wouldn't surprise me at all if some of the chemicals used to brew sold in my village originated from China. It's rather ironical that the dens of toxic brews are coming up just at the Chinese are gaining in influence over the Kenyan economy. The Chinese influence may require me to come up with a recipe of yet another libation against a second form of toxic brew: debt. That is one libation that I am yet to come up with.
Food justice is more complicated than most people might guess. Once you are food-literate you will see the injustices stemming from food all around you. A tea of Repetance gains a whole new meaning, and flavor. As I sat in my backyard, watching the organic ecosystem of birds building nests, bees pollinating flowers and the countless other creatures instinctively playing their roles without anyone's urging or supervision. I wondered if at all it is possible for us to play our respective roles in the global ecosystem.
That thought immediately conjured images from as far back as 399 BCE. Those images were of Socrates drinking a cup of hemlock for his principled stand against fake gods and youth manipulation by the powerful. Many other toxic brews have been consumed since then. But the main reason we know about the story of Socrates is because Plato, a student of Socrates, recorded it in the dialogue of Apology. To accompany the ritual of the Tea of Repetance, I put my earphones and listened to Miles Davis tune, Bitches Brew and poured a libation to the ecosystem in my backyard but also to the courage of my ancestors both kin and otherwise who have struggled for an ecosystem marked by justice that was represented all the wonderful creatures both visible and invisible.