The addicts are suffering, and, becoming agitated by the day as the the price of their favorite ‘drug’ of choice rises higher making them mad.
Their daily fix of dope is running out in the markets, and Kenya is beginning to experience the sort of anxiety usually reserved for elections, fuel shortages, and the sudden long disappearance of a politician from Parliament.
Expect moods swinging like pendulums, concentration disappearing halfway through conversations, large doses of irritability, throbbing headaches—as if Satan’s band has got high again—and, generally, a national gathering of grumpy fellows.
The drug is chai. Milky tea. And the essential ingredient is disappearing.
In Nairobi, you can already see urban grandmothers and mothers looking forlorn and lost as milk becomes scarce and prices rise. Supermarket shelves are beginning to resemble the aftermath of a successful looting expedition: empty or half-empty, with a few lonely packets staring back at shoppers.
Some wholesalers have stopped selling milk by the carton and are now handing out a few packets at a time, like pharmacists dispensing dangerous substances to desperate addicts.
Kenya is facing a rising milk shortage, and the authorities say the long drought is partly responsible. Pasture and fodder have declined in key dairy-producing areas, reducing milk production.
But what do you tell people who have been drinking tea almost from birth? That their daily chai will now become strungi? Or milkless strong tea. There are some things you can tell Kenyans. This is not one of them.
Tea with copious amount of milk is our national drug.
Breakfast in Kenya is incomplete without a cup of chai. On average, three out of four Kenyans drink between one and three cups a day. But that is the amateur class. The serious addicts are the mothers’ union.
It enters the mouth and suddenly strangers become friends. It is an injection for continuous mushene among women hunched over thermos flasks at chama meetings, prayer groups, and, social gatherings where nobody quite remembers who called the meeting but everyone knows there must be tea.
In Kenya, when guests arrive, the first question is rarely whether they have come from far. It is:
“Chai?”
Tea is brewed in large quantities suggesting that an entire constituency might arrive unannounced to visit.
At the workplace, tea is served. At home. During funeral keshas, buckets of tea is served. During meetings, tea is served. Arguments.., tea can be served before the argument begins so that everyone is properly lubricated for disagreement.
And akina mama cannot get enough of it. For them anytime is tea time.
Tea drinking is part of the colonial inheritance. The British arrived, took land, built railways, imposed taxes and, among other things, helped implant tea into our collective bloodstream.
Boarding schools completed the operation.
There was tea break at 10 o’clock and chai ya saa kumi at four. Generations of Kenyan children were therefore trained to believe that civilization itself pauses twice a day for tea.
No wonder Kenyans find it difficult to refuse a cup. Even corruption has borrowed the vocabulary.
A bribe given to a police officer is called chai. When your friends want to toanisha you through black tax, they do not necessarily ask for money. They say:
“Si uache ya chai.”
Tea has become both beverage and financial instrument. And although strungi—tea without milk—is perfectly drinkable, many Kenyans consider it an insult. Some believe strungi is what poor people drink.
Soon, this crowd may be making friendships with the pedi in the backstreets simply to satisfy their addiction of hot tea swimming in milk.
Tea came from China, travelled through India and was introduced into Kenya by colonial interests. Yet the Hindu word chai somehow survived the journey and became part of our everyday Kenyan vocabulary.
But there is another Kenyan speciality: producing something excellent and then exporting the best of it.
The purest tea leaves—the first flush—are shipped abroad, where they are blended with other teas, while what remains, including second-flush leaves, is sold locally. This is perfectly logical in a country where even the best things sometimes seem to require a passport before they are considered valuable.
Fortunately, what remains is still pretty good.
Milk, meanwhile, has become the latest casualty of our complicated economy. Kenya ranks among Africa’s major milk consumers and has a robust dairy industry that has been humming along for generations.
In rural Kenya, fermented and raw milk remain kings.
Our chai is traditionally brewed in a sufuria: boiling water, black tea leaves and a generous quantity of milk. Some Kenyans add cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, masala or whatever spice happens to be within reach.
And there was even a peculiar historical moment during the Mututho rules alcohol crackdown in 2010, when drinking joints in parts of Central Kenya were closed and chai replaced liquor, but as usual with sharp Kenyans, they spiced it with makali and that made the drunk sods happy.
Kenyan innovation has always been magnificent. But the current milk problem appears more complicated than El-nino alone.
The CEO of Kieni Dairy Products has pointed to other factors, including distribution logistics and working capital. Rising fuel prices and increasing transportation costs, while processors are turning towards higher-value products such as cheese, yoghurt and ice cream.
Delayed payments are also pushing farmers towards the black market, where milk can fetch better prices and farmers are paid immediately.
Then, naturally, Kenyans have developed theories. Some suspect supermarkets are hoarding milk to create artificial scarcity and increase profits, they say.
While popular brands like Mt Kenya milk, KCC, and Brookside are missing in action, newer brands most people had not heard of are appearing in supermarket shelves. Others have connected the shortage to the government’s ambitious livestock vaccination programme, which generated fierce public resistance.
Former Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka described the exercise as “shrouded in secrecy,” arguing that the public had not been adequately informed about its technical details, resources and implementation.
Some people have gone further, claiming foreign interests—including Bill Gates—are behind the vaccination programme to alter the genes of local cattle. Bill Gates, who is Kenya’s unofficial minister for Agriculture, has been behind the government’s cow vaccination campaign program so Kenyans cows don’t fart and emit “methane emissions” that cause “climate change.”
And now the chai addicts are watching the shelves. Long-life and UHT milk remain available, but pasteurised milk is the only one affected.
But let nobody underestimate the Kenyan mother with an empty thermos. If this crisis continues, the government may soon face something far more frightening than a parliamentary committee.
The Mothers’ Union Chai with Milk Resistance Movement. They will arrive in the streets carrying thermoses. Demand milk. And, knowing Kenya, somebody will probably ask them to take tea first.
There may be no milk. But there will definitely be a bunch of angry birds and hens suffering from ‘drug’ withdrawal symptoms who might spread their frustrations on us teetotalers.
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