Mar 21 - Tea Totalling

March 21


Two kwacha, forty-eight tambala. Just under 2 Australian cents.

That’s how much you’ll be paid by the estates for your work picking an entire kilogram of tea leaves – and let’s face it, they’re not the heaviest of things. Okay, so a good tea picker can pluck somewhere in the vicinity of 200 kilograms per day, but that’s some seriously back breaking work for only AUS$4. A tough living by anyone’s standards. These guys, numbering in their hundreds, walk the verdant greens of the plentiful tea estates day in day out, the backdrop of the stunning cliffs of Mount Mulanje becoming a bland normality, as they ply their trade.

Bizarrely, it is against this poverty that we on our Easter break head up the slopes of the mountain for a long weekend of hiking, photographing waterfalls and rocky peaks, drinking wine and luxuriating in the efforts of others labouring under the weight of our bags. That said, Mulanje was once again an unforgettable few days. Our seventh time up since living here and the mountain still never ceases to amaze with its natural beauty and unending diversity. Easter being a particularly picturesque time of year, with the wet season having eased, leaving crisp air and brilliant greens, flowers in abundance and water filling the pools and falls at every turn. We even discovered a few more huts we had not yet visited, situated in the almost surreal beauty of sweeping valleys, precipitous rock clad peaks and seemingly endless streams of untainted fresh mountain water. A truly relaxing four day long weekend; why would anyone trade this backyard in for anything else?

At least the porters, for whom this is their only form of income, get a decent wage for their efforts. 900 kwacha per day for four days, plus an extra day tip. That’s 4500 kwacha, or the equivalent of a reasonable monthly salary for many of the country’s non-city dwellers, in one weekend of work. One can hardly blame them for seeming overly keen for your business the moment you turn up in your nice cars with your fancy trekking boots and waterproof jackets, all unimaginably unaffordable luxuries to them. Yet they wear their packs with uncomplaining joviality, practically running up and down the sheer slopes of the massif in their flip-flops or bare feet (many of them run the annual Porter’s Race, a 26km course up the mountain, across and then down again – and they do it in a touch over 2 hours!), happy for the income they can then take back to their families.



And what do the efforts of a tea pickers get them, because we all know that AUS$4 per day wouldn’t go too far in Australia. One tomato costs 15 kwacha even in cheaper areas of Mulanje… that’s six kilograms of tea to be picked just to buy one single tomato. And if they want a beer at the end of a hard day’s work? That will be 30 kilos more tea my friend. TIA.