Pedro Tea Estate and a Gaggle of Girls
After lunch we did something I've always wanted to do - go and see a tea plantation and factory. The nearest is the Pedro Tea Estate, about 2km away. We got a good price from a passing tuk tuk and puttered off there.
Not sure about today, but in the old days every tea worker was guaranteed a home for life. We're not sure if 'life' means 'for the life of employment', though. It's also a fact that there was insufficient local population to work on the terraces so contract workers were imported from Tamil Nadu.
Broadly, this is the cause of the LTTE struggle in Sri Lanka. Very simplistic explanation: Contract workers are contract workers, citzens are citizens. The government does not wish to grant citizenship to contract workers. The LTTE has also gained support form native Tamils (ie not contract workers) in Sri Lanka, and is pressing its case. It even controls two large areas of the country with real administration, infrastructure and so forth.
Politics apart, it looks as if all tea workers are still Tamil. And it looks as if all the tea pickers are women.
The old wicker baskets have been replaced with sacks, but they're still worn in the best ergonomic position, on the back, tied around the forehead. It looks like a pretty rotten job. The terraces are cold, clammy and damp, and your entire day is spent walking up and down steep hills. Well, except when you are walking along a terrace, of course.
The factory tour showed some ancient machinery with no regard to ergonomics nor health and safety.
Why put a guard on a machine? Workers are cheap.
Why use a conveyor belt? They cost money and break down. Use a worker! Workers are cheap!
The factory was dead when we went round. It's rained too much and the tea is not picked when too wet. I wonder if it weighs too much and the workers get paid by weight?
Is this exploitation, though?If people are willing to work in these conditions, and if they make a reasonable living, and if it's normal, why should we bring UK values to bear on it?
What we do know is that this pile of tea chests is for decoration only! I haven''t seen a tea chest in years. This was a display in the lobby, and it was in the lobby that we met the party of 30 or so English girls on one of those expeditions whose mathematics make such interesting reading.
After the tour we were served tea, and I heard "You can't have tea without milk and sugar!" from one of them. So, two weeks in to an adventure expedition and she had learned not a single thing, then. £3,000 wasted for her, I think!
No photography allowed in the factory, so nothing much else to show you. And there ios one thing I wasn't able to do. I wanted to chew and taste a fresh tea leaf, just to see what it tasted like. Still, you can't have everything.
Apart from going for a stroll in the late afternoon round some green lanes and finding the entrance to the official residence of the President, that was the rest of our time in Nuwara Eliya. Worth a visit, not worth a stay.