For the love of African teas

As an immigrant, there are traditions you carry over with you to the new country and there are many more that you leave behind in the old country.

In my case, the old country is Kenya and the new is America.

The strongest expression of my old country in my life in the US today is in the form of food. The recipes my grandmother passed on to my mother and my mother to me have survived the proverbial crossing of the ocean. It doesn’t get more Kenyan than the tradition of Afternoon Tea.

Afternoon Tea is a British tradition that was carried over to many of the country’s colonies. Introduced in England in the early 1840s, it is a tea-related ritual that includes a small meal to help stem hunger between lunch and dinner.

Kenya took on this tradition – so well that I would dare to say that tea is the most important drink in Kenya (though many may argue it’s our national beer, Tusker). The country is currently the largest producer of tea in Africa. You can find a physical manifestation of this dominance in Kericho, the town where most of the country’s tea crop is grown.

Kenya has quadrupled its tea exports over the last decade, according to the Kenya Tea Board. (Yes, we have a Kenya Tea Board.)

The afternoon tea ritual itself is quite simple. Around 4pm throughout the country, people pause from their day to sit down and enjoy a cup of tea, often served with milk and sugar, or taken “strungi” (black). Finger foods include simple bread, sandwiches, a slice of cake or pastries. It is a shared meal with people often gossiping about politics – a national past-time and news of the day – before finishing off the latter part of their workday.

As much as I would like to think of Kenyans as the great influencers of all things to do with tea on the continent,  the ritual of tea is enjoyed throughout Africa. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), tea production in the East African region contributes 28% of the world market supply. Considering the fact that tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world, after water, with an estimated 18 to 20 billion cups of tea consumed every day, this is a major industry.

Other tea-growing African countries include Burundi, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

As a tea aficionado, I enjoy various blends from across the continent. These are my favourites:

Kenya
Kenyans drink black tea often taken with milk and sugar, though there are those who prefer it “strungi” or just black. My family enjoys the ginger-flavoured (Tangawizi in Swahili) variety of tea, a popular option that has a great kick to it. You can buy some online here.

Somalia
I was first introduced to Somali “shaah” two years ago, and it has since become my favourite type of tea. I was drinking it daily at one point. The spice makeup of this tea is just delicious: nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger with black tea all crushed together for an incredible aroma. Make it yourself using this recipe.

South Africa
There are many names for Rooibos (“red bush” in Afrikaans) tea including red rose tea, red clover tea, and red diamond tea. It is made from the rooibos plant found in the Western Cape region of South Africa. Dutch settlers are said to have turned to the drink as an alternative to expensive imported black tea from Europe.

The popularity of the tea has grown worldwide now making up 10% of the international herbal tea market and about 0.3% of a global tea market that has an estimated value of US$ 23 billion, according to the South African department of agriculture. The country exports 6000 tonnes of rooibos tea per year with annual exports quadrupling in the last 13 years. This is a good thing for tea growers in South Africa, but has also led to a number of legal issues abroad due to cultural appropriation – as seen in this case with a French tea company trying to trademark the word “Rooibos” in France.

Tunisia
Green mint tea is traditionally a North African and Middle Eastern drink, widely popular in Tunisia. My go-to recipe is from the Crimetcondiment blog, and includes a dash of pine nuts for flavour.

Green mint tea. (Pic: Chef Afrik)
Green mint tea. (Pic: Chef Afrik)

Green tea actually comes from the same crop as black tea. However, its leaves undergo minimal processing – which allows the tea to retain most of its antioxidants –  while black tea goes through an oxidation process.

The art of making a good green mint tea is in the foam/froth. To produce the froth on the surface, the tea is poured from a height out of a special pot with a long slender spout. You can also recreate this process yourself using two pots.

I am not the biggest fan of green tea but it is a delicious drink.

Senegal
There is also a large tea-drinking culture in West Africa especially in Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania. These countries prefer a green mint tea similar to the Tunisian recipe above. The difference is that the Senegalese prefer a much sweeter affair and add a good amount of sugar to their tea.

The drinking of tea is an elaborate three-round process known as “Ataya” in Wolof; Ataya is also the name of the tea. The first round of tea is always strong and bitter, the second more sweet with a little mint, and the third, very sweet.

Why three rounds? There are various reasons, all folk legend, but my favourite is this: “The first cup is the love of your mother. The second is the love of your friends. The third is the love of your love.”

Adhis is a journalist who blogs at Chef Afrik where she is currently cooking her way through Africa one country at a time. She writes about food, travel and culture on the continent. Connect with her on Twitter

FGM in Kenya: ‘Daughters seen as cattle for sale’

There can be few women who understand both the agonies and the economics of female genital mutilation better than Margaret, a grandmother in her 70s from Pokot, northern Kenya.

Her life has spanned the clumsy colonial efforts to ban the practice, which saw it become a cultural cornerstone of the Mau Mau uprising against British rule, right through to independent Kenya’s decision to reimpose the prohibition.

She has also put more girls than she can remember under the knife. When Margaret started, the tool of choice was a curved nail; more recently this has been replaced with imported razor blades.

The work, she concedes, is gruelling: frightened young girls would typically sit naked on a rock; once done, their excised clitorises would be thrown to the birds. For the cutters, or “koko mekong”, who can earn 2 500 Kenyan shillings (£18) for each girl, it is a livelihood.

“The cutters ask me: ‘If we leave doing this thing, what will we eat?'” Margaret says. “Tell the government to give us what to eat. If it’s just workshops then it will be no use. The circumcisers will not leave their career simply because they’re being told to leave it.”

The “cut” has been outlawed in Kenya since 2001. Despite this, a public health survey in 2009 found that 27% of women had been subject to FGM. Among some ethnic groups – such as the Somalis (98%) and Masai (73%) – that figure is much higher.

A second set of laws passed in 2011 made it illegal to promote or to facilitate what used to be known as female circumcision, and stiffened penalties. But changing the law was easier than changing practice.

Among communities such as the Endorois, who live near the picturesque Lake Bogoria, the cutting season has endured. But the ban has driven it underground, according to Elijah Kipteroi, the government-appointed chief of nearby Loboi, a role he describes as part policeman, part doctor, with a dash of marriage counsellor thrown in.

“In the old days there were preparations that you could see,” Kipteroi said. “Now, because of the law, the practice is carried on in hiding. It’s happening without ceremonies.”

The laws are still seen as foreign by many Endorois, especially the male elders, says the chief. They accuse him of criminalising their culture.

Dowry
Underpinning the practice is a sharply divergent vision of the roles of sons and daughters. In Kenya, a dowry is paid by the groom’s family. As a result, girls are seen as a valuable asset to their families, if they can be offered for marriage in the “right” condition.

“The daughters are seen as cattle to be sold,” said Kipteroi, who added that a bride price would be typically counted in livestock, worth perhaps as much as 30 cows. “No one will even negotiate a bride price for uncut girls.”

On the surface, communities in places such as Loboi are broadly supportive of traditions such as FGM. Uncut girls, sometimes referred to as “raw” as opposed to mutilated “ripe” women, can expect to be shunned by their neighbours. They are forced to walk for miles to fetch water so they don’t “contaminate” pumps and wells; local midwives even refuse to deliver their “unclean” babies.

Reuben Orgut, a wiry man in his 60s with a sprinkling of silver stubble, one of the elders in Sandai, is unapologetic about FGM and the economics behind it.

“When I get this dowry it’s a way to support the other siblings. It means that when my sons also marry I have something to give out.”

He says the girls who refuse to be cut and married off are “stealing” from their own families. “It is not fair since they are a source of wealth. Some who have not been circumcised leave the family without us getting the bride wealth.”

However, not everyone is so keen to defend the rite.

Changing attitudes
Joseph Kapkurere is one of a trio of local teachers who have been trying to change ingrained attitudes among pupils and parents, even if doing so comes at the cost of frequent confrontation with relatives, friends and neighbours.

Kapkurere escaped the strictures that he grew up with when he went to college in Kisumu, a city in western Kenya where female genital mutilation is not common. “I was able to question why this happens and make up my own mind,” he said.

He married a woman from another ethnic group and resisted his relatives’ entreaties to have her undergo FGM. In Kapkurere’s home community he estimates that nine out of 10 girls are mutilated. As a teacher he found that schoolgirls would tell him that their parents were arranging for them to be cut against their will. He decided to start offering sanctuary during the school holidays which were often used by parents to have the girls mutilated.

“We thought at least we can keep them in school for longer, we can buy some time and subvert the parents’ plans,” he said.

And so now, during the longer holidays, dozens of girls will stay in the sanctuary of the school in Sandai to avoid the rite of passage.

Kenyan teenage Maasai girls attend an alternative right of passage on April 19 2008 at a ceremony organised by an anti-female genital mutilation campaign, Cherish Others Organisation. (Pic: AFP)
Kenyan teenage Maasai girls attend an alternative right of passage on April 19 2008 at a ceremony organised by an anti-female genital mutilation campaign, Cherish Others Organisation. (Pic: AFP)

The Cana girls’ rescue centre, set among the dark volcanic rock, aloes and thorny acacias north of Lake Baringo, is home to more proof of the limits of legislation in changing lives.

The Rev Christopher Chochoi, a Catholic priest, set up the shelter in 2002 after praying with a young girl as she died from the rat poison she had consumed rather than return to the violent and abusive old man she had been forced to marry.

Today, it houses around 50 girls, some of whom have fled forced marriages, as well as runaways or outcasts who have refused to submit to FGM and have been ostracised by their families.

One of them is Diana (16), who came to Cana two years ago. She walked for nearly three days through the bush to avoid being married off after being pressured into being cut – a brutal procedure that left her angry and disillusioned.

“I knew I was going to be circumcised because we were being pressurised but I didn’t know it was bad and would lead to marriage afterwards,” she said.

She had been expecting a “good adventure”, she remembers ruefully, and was ignorant of what was coming when she went to see the koko mekong with four friends.

“I regret having undergone the circumcision because some of my friends, after undergoing it, bled to death. Some of them had challenges when giving birth because of age and as a result they ended up dying while giving birth.”

Chochoi’s wife, Nelly, hopes that the experience of young women such as Joan Rikono, who stayed for five years at Cana, will inspire other girls. The 25-year-old earned a scholarship at a college and returns to mentor the rescue centre’s current residents.

Nelly hopes Rikono can show the community they are wrong to think of educated girls as lost or worthless.

Nonetheless, the job of persuasion is slow and dangerous. The centre’s matriarch came to face to face with the risks two years ago when furious and armed male relatives of one of the girls stormed into the centre. They demanded that one of the girls who was due to be cut and married off be handed over. A tall woman with a strong, clear voice, she stood her ground: “I told them we don’t have any wives here, just schoolgirls.”

Daniel Howden for the Guardian

Black girl privilege

(Pic: Flickr / epSos.de)
(Pic: Flickr / epSos.de)

When I was a kid, my mother told me I would have to work harder in this life because I was black girl – a warning I am sure many others of my gender and race have received. I should mention that, at the time, I was living in a country where the majority of people were white. As I grew up, I heard the same message in the media – on the news, blogs, in songs and films – it was clear that everyone believed that at the top of the economic food chain were rich white men and at the very bottom were poor black girls.

I moved to my country of origin, Rwanda, when I was 22. It is a small developing country at the heart of Africa that has been recognised for its impressive economic grown in the last decade. As a young adult, I found myself in a world full of charities and NGOs that had pictures of girls that looked just like a 10-year-old me, only no one had brushed their hair or got them to put on their prettiest clothes before taking the picture. I read disheartening statistics that told me that most girls my age and from my region had already given birth to their first child, had dropped out of school, had been subject to sexual violence, domestic abuse – do I need to go on? So what happens to me – a university-educated, single, entrepreneur with a face that world believes belongs to a victim?

This is what happens: rather than suffering the negative discrimination I was promised, the opposite has happened. People want to help me – not because they think I’m intelligent, or driven, or skilled – but because they believe I must need it, being an African woman. I can’t tell you how many times I have been approached (often by white men), with offers to invest in my business or with other valuable opportunities before they’ve had had a chance to get to know me or my business – to know if I really need it or even deserve it. On top of the freebies thrown at me, I often get asked to represent groups that I am a part of, because having a young black woman on the cover will give the impression of diversity and goodwill. You see, as an African woman, there are many people who want to help you through “the struggle” (or at least be photographed helping you through it).

Contrast this with the issues faced by the young white men here in Rwanda and in other African countries. The prejudice they face is that they are all rich, hard working and of course, very generous! I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked by some of my African friends to ask my white friends to help them out financially – a scholarship, a job, a gift, etc. On top of this, white men (and women, too) are often subjected to “muzungu prices” – inflated prices believed that only a white person can pay – no, should pay, because, after all, they have more money than they know what to do with, right? Interestingly, many of the white friends I have in Rwanda are missionaries and volunteers (a few are business people but I don’t know if they are rich… and if they are, they haven’t told me!). The other day, a friend of mine, a white woman, visited Rwanda from the UK. Soon after I was seen with her, I was asked by a Rwandan friend to get my British friend to sponsor her child’s education. She did not ask me if my British friend could afford it or if she was the kind of person to do that – she had seen enough when she saw the colour of her skin.

Many Rwandans have a glorified image of white people – and why wouldn’t they? After all, when we Rwandans visit Europe or America or Australia, we take photos in the capital cities, in front of gleaming skyscrapers, expensive cars, and posh houses. To pose with of a random child playing in the dirt or a homeless man in rags sitting in the street and make that our Facebook profile picture would seem ludicrous!

As a result, white people visiting Africa continue to suffer under the stereotype that they all live on 100 dollars a day. Meanwhile, rich – well, okay, I’m not rich so let’s say “financially stable” –  black girls like me must continue to have money thrown at us. So, I guess you’re wondering – what’s the secret? How can you know whether or not a white man that just walked by is here on an expensive holiday or a missionary trip? How can you tell if that black girl is wearing torn jeans as a fashion statement or because she can’t afford new ones? Well – here’s the secret: get to know them!

Akaliza Keza Gara is the founder of a multimedia company called Shaking Sun, a member of Girls In ICT Rwanda, the Kigali Global Shapers hub and kLab, an ICT innovation hub. She loves open source technology, animated films and chocolate milkshakes. Follow her on Twitter: @AkalizaKeza

Zimbabwe church leader jailed for rape

Zimbabwean court officials say a church leader has been sentenced to 50 years’ imprisonment for raping female congregants, forcing them to engage in sex orgies at his home, and for possessing pornography.

According to court documents viewed on Tuesday, Magistrate Hosea Mujaya described Robert Gumbura, leader of RMG Independent End of Time Message, a religious sect, as a “wolf in sheep’s skin” who abused his followers’ trust.

It is alleged Gumbura coerced the women to perform sex orgies with him threatening to “commit them into Satan’s hands” if they refused.

Gumbura (57), who has 11 wives married under cultural tradition, and 30 children, pleaded not guilty to the charges maintaining the sexual acts were consensual and led to marriage if the women became pregnant, as part of his sect’s doctrine.

Of the 50-year sentence, 10 years were suspended on condition of good behaviour. Read more here.

Sapa-AP

 

Nigerian authorities arrest online romance scammer

(Pic: Flickr / Don Hankins)
(Pic: Flickr / Don Hankins)

Nigerian authorities have arrested a 28-year-old man suspected of defrauding an Australian widow in a fake online romance, a year after she was found dead during a trip to South Africa where she intended to meet him.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said it had arrested Orowo Omokoh on January 28 on suspicion of conning 67-year-old Jette Jacobs out of $90 000 after they met on an internet dating site.

Jacobs, a grandmother, flew from her home in Western Australia to meet Omokoh in South Africa last February, but died four days later under circumstances still being investigated by South African police.

Omokoh had arrived in the country two days before her death.

“We received a complaint about the fraudulent relationship from police in South Africa. We tracked him for a while, then we closed in,” EFCC spokesperson Wilson Uwujaren said.

He stressed the Nigerian commission only had power to investigate the alleged fraud committed on its territory but would co-operate with South African police on any extradition request.

Fake online romances are common form of advance fee fraud in Nigeria – generically called “419 scams”, after the section in the penal code. Authorities say they have become more popular as the classic emails promising impossibly good business deals become less effective.