After a later breakfast, the men folk left with Stephen on a “45 minute” (our team joke was that everything in Kenya is 45 minutes away) trip to Maua. Here they saw two of Stephen’s buildings: a flour mill and one of his two restaurants. They visited the Maua Methodist Hospital, which has regular hospital facilities spread across a number of buildings. They have changed some financial processes so all who are able to pay do so. They met doctors, nurses and various administrators, and saw the nursing school where Florence was previous director. The hospital complex receives funding from many countries, and the hospital relies on this support. They plan to further expand as present needs cannot be met.
After this, they went up a mountain over rough road to a tea factory where they witnessed the entire process from green tea leaves arriving in sacks from farers’ trucks to the finished black tea, ready for market. Wilting of the leaves takes 16 hours, but after that, in 90 minutes, it goes from being torn or chapped to being fermented dried and sent out via a separating machine that divides it into seven different grades of bulk packaged tea. Their next stop was a coffee factory in Meru. Here they saw coffee beans arrive in sacks. Women, sitting on concrete flooring lined with burlap, were picking out bad beans. Green coffee has an extended life of four or five years, but, once roasted, the shelf life in short as far as connoisseurs are concerned. The green beans are tossed about by machine to remove the shells and interior skin. They are then divided by size and shape into five categories. The green coffee can then be sold. Farmers only get $1/lb. where users pay $5/lb. If an expresso coffee is desired, the beans are sun-dried and the result is a strong bitter coffee. Coffee does not go through many middle men. Neal was most interested in improving the lot of the coffee growers.
