Plant

The first plantation that I saw was a derelict sugar plantation in Hawaii, old dilapidated plant and a cane steam loco rusting away, half buried in tall grass. The day was hot and sunny and there was a peaceful silence over the whole area, that I have since found and grown to love in many of the plantations I have visited since, it reminds me of hot lazy days of childhood. Living in an industrialised urban world, finding peace and quiet becomes increasingly difficult, along with finding the time available to enjoy it when the opportunity presents itself.

The second plantation visited was in Barbados just before harvesting time. I had hired a mini-moke and was totally lost amongst small roads in the plantations, and due to the height of the cane fields unable to see a way out – like being in a gigantic maze with the cane gently waving in the warm breeze. A jolly middle aged lady on a bicycle – who turned out to be a midwife – helped me out of my problem by drawing me a map of left and right turns back to the main road. We chatted for a while and I offered her a lift, she could put her bike in the back, but she deferred saying she enjoyed the cycling through the fields and was in no hurry.

The third was a rubber plantation in Sri Lanka. John Lincoln (later to be best-man at my wedding) and I were on holiday together.

Wandering around in the shade of the rubber trees with the sunlight dappling through is a peaceful experience. Occasionally we came across small teams of ladies with buckets collecting the contents from the coconut shells and small pots fastened to the trees; that the tapped sap drains into. Using the driver as an interpreter, he said that every few hours a donkey and cart would collect the full buckets from the teams and exchange them for empty ones. We hitched a ride on the back of a donkey and cart and went as far as the weighing station. First, the contents of the buckets had to undergo testing for specific gravity with a glass float. This check was to prevent anyone from adding water to the buckets to increase the weight upon which the workers were paid their daily wage. The weighing station was a small wooden hut occupied by a supervisor who, after testing the specific gravity, recorded it in an enormous hard-backed accounting journal, weighed the full bucket on an ancient balance scale, recorded the weight, emptied the contents into a large wheeled tank and then reweighed the empty bucket and calculated the quantity for the journal.

At the end of the day, the wheeled tank was pulled by a donkey to the rubber curing building. This building contained a variety of open-top shallow tanks into which the sap was poured. The sap was then stirred and aerated, then when the texture was right (the sap coagulates on exposure to air, converting it to latex) it was fed through hand-operated roller presses, similar to old-fashioned washing mangles until long thin sheets were produced. Then the sheets were hung out to dry on a washing line, or put into a room and smoke-dried over wood fires.

As we trudged back to the taxi, the heat of the day was building. We passed three big-horned buffalo sloshing around and cooling down in a sizeable mud hole.

Despite laborious and monotonous work, the people we saw seemed happy enough. It was a slow pace of life; the peace and quiet of the plantation were enjoyable and well worth the visit.

The people were all very friendly, and the supervisors who spoke English took time to chatter and show us all the aspects of the plantation.

Back in the taxi, as we were leaving the plantation, we saw a wild mongoose scurry across the road.

‘A Rikki Tikki Tavi!’ I said.

‘A what?’

‘Did you not read Rikki Tikki Tavi at school?’

John looked blank.

‘It’s a Children's story by Rudyard Kipling. It’s about a mongoose who saves a baby from a deadly snake.’

‘I’m not much of a reader now, never mind when I was at school.’ John shook his head

A Sri Lankan tea plantation was our next stop, acres upon acres of tea bushes with the calm hush of the plantation, and the oppressive heat and humidity of the tropical afternoon. Again we just called in, found a supervisor and asked if we could look around. He directed us to a manager who said he would be happy to personally conduct us. We saw the tea being brought to the factory by men on bicycles with panniers of leaves on each side of the rear wheel. The tea first went to the wilting rooms after which it was processed through rolling machines.

Following the rolling the leaves are spread in large cool and humid rooms to ferment. At just the right time the fermentation is stopped by drying the fermented leaves in wood burning ovens. Finally the leaves are sorted by size over a mechanical sieving machine in to whole leaves, large piece broken leaves, smaller broken leaves (fannings), and dust.

As we left the factory to walk through the plantation a light rain started and the earthy fragrance produced by the hot ground and the tea bushes from the surrounding countryside was heady.

Twenty years later Tessie and I visited a neighbouring tea plantation, almost identical in layout and I got the impression that nothing much changes. I think this is mainly because the picking cannot be mechanized - the pickers only remove the top two leaves and bud from each shoot – and the machinery of the factory is simple, robust, easily maintained and will probably run for ever.

Mr Baldsing, a Sri Lankan business associate of mine, arranged for me to visit a tea blending factory in Colombo managed by his son-in-law. The factory dated from the late 1800’s and was delightful to see. On the ground floor there was a warehouse which at one end was full of traditional wooden tea chests ready for exporting around the world. At the other end bulk tea arrived from the plantations and was emptied on to a conveyor that lifted it to the first floor where it was deposited in to piles on the smooth wooden floor.

Each pile in this room was either a different grade of tea or tea from a different plantation. The workforce was mainly female and they were mostly paid on piecework. Teas from the various piles were fed in to small hoppers in set proportions to be blended and then deposited in blended piles to be packaged. Ladies sat around the blended piles in groups with boxes of tea packets and weighing scales. They would scoop up the tea with an odd shaped funneled tool and fill each packet by hand, correct the weight by adding or removing tea, then place the packets in to trays which were later taken to a sealing machine. Again I got the impression that the work had not changed much since the factory was built.

The whole place was filled with the sweet aroma of tea and ages old wood.

The offices, other than having the ubiquitous PC’s and fax machines, were as they had been originally built, with grooves worn in to the steps and flooring from years of wear. Another delightful day taken out of a busy work schedule.

For a few years in the early 90's I worked in the Philippines and used to visit the Central Azucarera Don Pedro and Victorias Milling sugar plantations in Batangas province. The refinery in the centre of the plantation was closed for most of the year, gearing up for 24 hour production from the start of harvest time. During the closure months, whilst the crop is growing, refinery maintenance and modification is carried out and this was when I used to visit.

About 1/2 mile from the refinery, surrounded by cane fields, was a plantation guest house where visitors could take meals and stay overnight if they had travelled far. The guest house was made almost entirely of local hardwoods with polished wooden floors and walls and intricately carved doors and wooden window shutters. Sitting on comfortable rattan chairs on the verandah overlooking the fields was an excellent way to siesta on a hot afternoon after a lunch of rice with chicken stew. The guest house was run by three elderly ladies, employed by the plantation who arranged the simple but homely food and cleaned and tidied the guest rooms. Two Austrailian's from the Tate & Lyle company were staying when I first visited and after our lunch came local Batangas coffee served on the veranda, excellent flavour, accompanied by a thick carved wooden tray of about 20'' diameter, with dozens of small scallops carved in to its surface. Each scallop contained a different grade or style of sugar - coarse, fine, powder, white, brown, some almost black, cubes etc., etc. There must have been 40 or 50 types and I remember the puzzled expression on the lady's face when I politely declined saying that I did not take sugar!