The women of the hills who serve you tea

Smallholder tea farmers.[Photo Provided by Malaka Rodrigo and Vishwamithra Kadurugamuwa]

The laborers

Bearwell Estate, one of the 13 tea estates under Talawakelle Plantation PLC, was among our stops. The estate covers 307 hectares on lease from the Sri Lankan government for 99 years since 1992. The annual rent paid to the government is about 350,000 rupees ($2,300), rising gradually every year.

Dulshanka Jayathilaka, manager of the estate, said the best conditions for cultivating tea are sunny mornings followed by a shower in the afternoon. This year there has been a drought.

In fact, although it was mid March, it was very hot. A couple of dozen tea pickers were working in the fields, each holding in hand a long, slim bamboo pole. The pole functions as a ruler, the workers placing the pole horizontally over a patch of tea bush and picking those leaves that have grown over a certain height. In this way they manage to maintain the slope in the terraced tea land.

Working in small groups, the tea pickers' sun-tanned faces seemed to have receded into the head scarf-like bundle of cloth that they wore on their head. Also tied on their head was a big cloth bag, so big that it extended from the head right to the back and then to the lower half of the body. All the weight falls onto a worker's head, which explains why they all bent slightly forward as they moved amid the tea fields, continually throwing tea leaves into the bags as they plucked.

The monthly salary is about 10,000 rupees ($66) for a quota of 18 kilograms a day, and a worker is paid an extra 25 rupees for each kilogram above that quota. It is an open question as to whether sustaining such weight with one's head and forehead over many years can stunt or even reverse growth. (On some plantations, minors are still being used as laborers). But almost all the tea pickers are women whose stamina makes it possible for them to be in the job for many years, sometimes their entire working life.

Some were physically exquisite. That same morning I met a young lady in her house on the estate, a three-bedroom bungalow she shared with 11 of her family including her parents. Her mother, whose first name is Thangamma, meaning gold, had been picking tea for more than 40 years until age and severe respiratory disease forced her to quit.

She said she was once given an award by the plantation management for hard work - picking 100 kilos of tea leaves a day - little consolation when the disease struck and no compensation was offered. I later brought this issue up with the estate manager, who said that all the workers are insured against workplace accidents such as falls resulting in broken bones.

Yet the chance of having such an accident seems remote - the tea trees are so densely planted that cutting into them requires some effort. On the other hand, it would no doubt be extremely difficult, legally and medically, to prove a connection, let alone causation, between the use of pesticides and respiratory diseases if one existed.