A word from the front page photograph of Boundary Vol. 6

Title: Coffee Beans Harvest

Taken on 2001 by Shinichiro ISHIDA
(Assistant Professor of Faculty of Urban Liberal Arts, Tokyo Metropolitan University)

The above photograph shows coffee beans harvesting in an agricultural village in Nyambene district in central highland of Kenya, where coffee bean and tea leaf are cultivated as important cash crops exported to various parts of the world including Japan. Nowadays, cash crop has been diversified due to declining of the price of coffee in the world market. Furthermore, inherent luxury items of Nyambene district like miraa (a kind of plant called “Khat” in Arabic) is becoming an important cash crop instead of coffee bean and tea leaf (Nyambene district miraa is a global level income resource exported to England and various western countries). At present, household of the woman in the photograph (she had given birth to a child and now moved to another village) is even focusing more on growing miraa than coffee. Whereas coffee bean and tea leaf have become the formal sector of both production and distribution since they were first introduced in the English colonial period, most miraa is cultivated and distributed in the informal sector. This photograph was taken in year 2001 in Nyambene district in the central highland of Kenya.