| | It is illegal to uproot coffee. But nowadays in the farmsteads of Murang'a district, at the heart of the coffee producing belt of Central Kenya, one can see many crops other than coffee growing between the coffee bushes, while coffee itself remains untended. In particular, the dark green with which coffee has painted the hillsides is now broken by light feathery leaves of banana trees. Coffee is the crop of men, but bananas, as a food crop, are the crop of women. Bananas grow best in coffee producing areas and their increasing importance is now a major challenge to coffee. So much so, that, despite their association with women, men are now moving into the banana market, and in the process, transforming relationships between gender, wealth and power in rural Kenya. |
