Kikuyu Land

Kenyan journalist Bea Wangondu dives into the injustices and land disputes surrounding the tea plantations in her ancestral homeland Kikuyu. While her investigation slowly becomes deeply personal, she uncovers long-suppressed stories: tea fields hiding contested histories, families carrying untold wounds, and a community bound by both loss and unshakable resolve.

During their colonial rule of Kenya, the British stole lots of agricultural land from its original owners. Nowadays much of that land is controlled by multinational corporations using it as tea plantations. While these corporations operate a billion dollar tea industry, the workers are without rights and grossly underpaid. Many families that once owned the land are determined to get back what should be rightfully theirs, but are running into brick walls.

Journalist Bea Wangondu sets out to uncover the way Kenya’s colonial past is still fuelling deep divisions. We meet Mr. Mungai, an engineer whose father was forcibly removed from his land in 1932. He tries to regain his family’s lost property, which is was occupied by Unilever until 2022. We meet Joseph Njenga, who was born and raised at a tea plantation where his family was forced to work. ‘I’m a tea child,’ he says. Now his organisation Better Tomorrow Today fights for tea workers’ rights and helps mentor and tutor children on the tea plantations. Stephen is just a child but already works as a tea picker. And Jecinta Gathoni started working at a plantation as a girl in 1968.

Bea Wangondu tells their stories with compassion, but when she tries to get in contact with the plantation owners and with Unilever, they systematically dodge her. More and more she discovers that her investigation affects the highest levels of government. And when she encounters a hidden part of her own family’s past, her quest becomes deeply personal.