Hill Country; Part 4 - Tea

Tea; it’s as English as fish and chips. Or curry. And whether you like it in a mug, or a cup and saucer from a tea pot (depending on which end of the social spectrum you come from) you probably think of it as your national drink. That, or lager.

But we don’t grow it anywhere in the UK as far as I’m aware…and never have done. We import it all from various parts of the world that also happen to be former British colonies, such as the worlds four largest producers and exporters; China, India, Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) and Kenya. Although we think of it as being our national beverage we don’t actually have any real claim to it - it’s drunk by everyone, all over the world. We are one of the largest importers of the stuff though, so maybe our claim to it is that we drink more of it than anyone else (also probably true of lager).

So I can’t very well visit this country without saying something about it, and of course taking some pictures. Ceylon tea (they still call it that, even though the country changed it’s name back in the 1970’s) is one of the best tea’s in the world, apparently, and most of it is grown, picked and processed up in the hills in and around Nuwara Eliya. As soon as you start to drive up the long winding roads into the district, the whole country seems to be given over to growing it. As far as the eye can see it’s tea. The plantations are divided up into different ‘Estates’ (most of which have suspiciously English sounding names like Edinburgh estate, and Norwood Estate etc.) and vary in taste and quality according to altitude. Most of it is picked by hand, by ladies…the blokes do heavy stuff like chopping trees, and driving lorry loads of tea about. It’s just like the postcards; ladies with sacks over their shoulders picking tea leaves by hand, and it looks idyllic.

Tea fields underneath 'Ella Gap'.

Except it isn’t. Nuwara Eliya is home to some of the poorest people in the country, and most of them work on the tea plantations. On a basic wage of around Rs 380 a day (just under £4) many of the workers are unable to rise above the poverty line. On top of that, the cost of living is accelerating upwards  (during our four months here electricity has gone up twice by 50%) and the wages are not keeping up. The poor are actually becoming poorer. (That sounds quite familiar…) The working and living conditions of the plantation workers are not great either. They work long hours, doing hard manual work, which in some cases is hazardous (spraying the crops with fertilisers/pesticides with no protective clothing) and go home to extremely basic housing, which, for the most part is provided by the tea estates on which they work, and for which they have to pay rent.

Many of the tea estates are part of the ‘Fairtrade’ scheme, which is supposed to promote a better deal for the workers on the estates, but all that seems to happen is that the tea is sold for a higher premium, and the money never quite trickles down to the workers… There is an interesting documentary film called “The bitter taste of Tea” which talks about this Fairtrade issue in greater depth.

As part of my MA work I needed to produce a piece of work, which had an issue at heart, as well as another piece which has a narrative. The Tea plantations provided me with both narrative (production in Sri Lanka – consumption in the UK…’connectivitea’) as well as issue (the hard life of the workers). I started by doing some portraits of the workers in the tea fields, trying to avoid doing the standard postcard clichés.

Tea Plucker, 'Upper Glencairn'

Tea Plucker, 'Upper Glencairn'

Tea Plucker, 'Upper Glencairn'

Tea Plucker, 'Upper Glencairn'

Basket of freshly plucked green leaf tea

One of the male tea plantation workers, holding a tool for chopping back weeds

Male plantation workers

Feeling quite pleased with some of these I decided to go and take some pictures of the factories (most of them run tours for tourists).  Unfortunately I discovered that almost all the factories forbid you to take photos…so I had to be a bit sneaky; I went on a couple of tours with my camera hanging on my shoulder and either snapped when the guide wasn’t looking, or tried to shoot stuff from the hip without framing – not easy!

Kinellan Tea Factory, Ella

Fresh leaf tea is poured through holes in the ceiling ready to be withered (dried).

Withering room

Rolling Machine

Fermenting Black Tea

Boxes of Tea, ready to be packed into sacks

Tea Bags.

Having looked at what I had shot so far I realised it didn’t really say much about the poverty aspect, so I decided I had to invite myself to some tea workers houses. I found out where some tea workers lived, and turned up with my assistants Britta and Noah (Noah being the ultimate ice breaker, I have discovered) and asked if I could take some pictures of them. What we found was about 45 (very small) homes, split into two compounds, housing around 540 people. I went back to the same group of houses a couple of times, there was so much to photograph. There was no running water, no in-door toilets, cooking was over a wood burning fire, and most houses had around ten people living there. Interestingly though I did see a few satellite dishes on roofs, and one home I went into had a stereo with enormous speakers facing out of the open window and seemed to be providing the soundtrack for the whole neighbourhood.

Tea Working family outside their home, in a tea workers compound.

Tea Working family outside their home.

Tea Working family outside their home.

Retired Tea worker

Retired Tea worker

School kid (future Tea worker?)

School kids and toy gun.

Grandmother, with daughter and Grand son.

Grandmother holding her wedding photograph 

Kitchen

Pluckers record card, detailing number of kilo's picked per day.

Two brothers, both plantation workers, Volley ball trophies behind. 

View of the plantation workers compound, surrounded by tea fields. 

It was a difficult thing to do; I didn’t want to be invasive, or be too obviously interested in their poverty. The language barrier prevented me from explaining why I was there, so to some extent I just played the dumb tourist. I also took along my trusty Polaroid printer and gave them family portrait prints in return for letting me into their homes, and compound, which went down very well…

Almost all the workers in Sri Lanka’s tea fields are Tamil, descended from the Tamils imported from South India by the British as cheap labour for tea and rubber plantations. Now, more than a hundred years later, they are still there, and are still cheap labour. Much of it is unskilled work, and while doing this work they are unlikely, or unable, to learn new skills with which to escape the trap they are in. It’s almost as though the British colonial masters have indentured them, and their families to stay there forever, in order to provide us with our cups of tea. So, next time you brew up, spare a thought for where your cuppa may have come from, and all the hard graft that went into making it (before you switched the kettle on). 

Greenland Estate Tea plantations, Ella.