Eight years ago when Sara and I first started Ajiri Tea, we met with Pauline, at the time, the only female manager of a tea factory in Kenya. Pauline encouraged us, but cautioned, "You're up against a lot." What she meant by "a lot" was the male-dominated society. A culture where women are unemployed or underemployed. A culture where women can grow the wheat, make the flour, bake the bread, but will never be seen as "breadwinners."
It wasn't that the women weren't working before Ajiri Tea. They just weren't getting paid. In Kenya, it is the women who fetch the firewood. It is the women who walk to the river to collect water and then carry it home. It is the women who cook, the women who clean. It is the women who tends to the shamba, or small-farm.* And it is the women who worry if their children have a school uniform. If their children have light to study. If their children have enough food to eat.
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And with each of these rituals, in each of these small moments over the next few weeks, our heart aches. We want our Ajiri scholars to feel these small moments of love as they go to school. We want there to be someone to drop them off at school and embarrass them with a hug. We want there to be someone waiting at home to talk to them. We want them to feel frustrated when their parents try to help with their physics homework.
Angela, Wesley, and Damacline were now hopelessly off course. They had managed to scale that final fence and were walking down toward a forest. I wanted to run to them, set them on the right course, explain scale and direction and how they should put the compass on the map. But instead I watched them from the top of the hill. They were now making pretend owl calls to each other, quite literally hooting from one group to another and then bursting into laughter.
See, there is this tip-toeing around issues in business. No company should align itself too "political" for fear of alienating customers. But to have opinions and emotions—well, that's just human. As a society, we've become too corporatized—too sanitized to believe that companies shouldn't have a voice. Of course politics affect our business. Tariffs on tea! The war in Iran means higher costs of shipping our tea. The elimination of USAID and its direct impact on our community in Kenya. But more so than something directly affecting us and our business, we still care about policies that affect our neighbors and people across the world.
Kate Holby
Author