PREPARED BY: BEATA MAJCHROWSKA,  PHOTOS: SYLWIA MOKRYSZ

Every cup of tea has its own history. However, its story does not begin in the kitchen, but thousands of kilometres away – on a plantation, where the quality of the brew is determined by the experience, patience and daily work of people whose names we will most likely never know.

For Sylwia Mokrysz, who has spent years developing the tea division at her family’s company, Mokate, tea is more than just an everyday drink. Before the story of tea became part of her daily life, however, she decided to visit the place where it all begins. This is how she ended up in Kericho – one of Kenya’s most important tea-growing regions.

It was not the landscape that made the greatest impression on her, although the green hills stretching to the horizon are hard to forget. What she remembers most are the people – their calmness, precision and the confidence with which they move. While visiting the plantation, she quickly realised that picking the two youngest leaves and the bud, from which the finest teas are made, requires years of experience and skill.

The photographs from Kericho reveal a side of Kenya that is not featured in tourist guidebooks. They tell the story of the people, their daily working lives and the places that imbue an ordinary cup of tea with new meaning.

“On many plantations, life revolves around tea. Schools, shops and workers’ houses stand alongside the fields. Children return from school along the same path their parents take to carry the harvest to the weighing stations. It is not just a workplace, but an entire local community.”

“In the colonial house on the plantation, time seems to follow a rhythm of its own. Old issues of National Geographic lie on the table and a cup of tea sits by the fireplace. Just a few simple objects are enough to make us realise that our journey only ends when we start to look at everyday things differently.”

“On the plantation, it soon became clear that recognising two leaves and a bud is not as easy as it seems. Experienced pickers select them almost instinctively. I needed a few attempts and some patient guidance. It was only then that I realised that the quality of tea begins with a single, seemingly simple decision.”

“The old guest book is several decades old. Its yellowed pages read like a chronicle of the people who have come to Kericho over the decades to discover the world of tea. In places like this, it is easy to sense that ‘tradition’ is not just an empty word.”

September 2026