A Tribute to Milk Bike Drivers
Submitted by John VanLeeuwen
February 8, 2006
Dairy farmers that live in remote parts of Kenya have difficulty getting their milk to market. For some, the roads are not passable by trucks, especially in the Embu district which lies within the foothills of Mt. Kenya. So the farmers need to use alternative appropriate transportation. Bring in the bicycles!!!
The Embu Dairy Co-op has 2500 registered dairy farmer members. These farms are spread out over a large area, nearly 500 square kilometers. Within this area, the Co-op has 4 milk cooling tanks to which the milk is transported, then cooled, and then sent on to dairy processors in Nairobi. However, only ¼ of the farmers live close enough to the cooling tanks to walk their milk to the tanks themselves. The remaining ¾ of farmers rely on 100 milk bike drivers!
So try to picture a man driving a bicycle with a crate tied to the bicycle rack behind the seat, and two 25 litre cans of milk in the crate. Not such a big deal you say? Well, how about another two 25 litre cans of milk straddling the bar between the handle bars and the seat? How many of us would be able to ride a bike loaded down with an extra 100 kg? If you’re dutch, you may have some experience riding a bike with more than one person on it, but people don’t slosh around like milk does in these milk cans. These young men must have very good balance to navigate the twisting hills of Embu district with their milk loads.
Now imagine that it is the rainy season in Kenya and these milk bike drivers are riding up and down these same mountainous paths with slippery mud on them!!! These men are performing a death-defying circus act every day! And they are happy to do so, not just because it is good exercise through a beautiful landscape, but because it is a job that makes them 1 Kenyan shilling per litre. If they transport 100 litres per day, at 60 shillings per dollar, they earn $1.65 per day. They won’t get rich on this, but that will put food on the table for them.
While these milk bike drivers are a solution to a problem pecular to highland Kenya, they create another problem. The cans that they use are plastic and have a small opening with a screw-top. These plastic cans are harder to clean than aluminum cans, like those that were used in Canada in years gone by. Therefore milk quality is a concern. It’s a good thing that many people boil their milk here.
February 8, 2006
Dairy farmers that live in remote parts of Kenya have difficulty getting their milk to market. For some, the roads are not passable by trucks, especially in the Embu district which lies within the foothills of Mt. Kenya. So the farmers need to use alternative appropriate transportation. Bring in the bicycles!!! The Embu Dairy Co-op has 2500 registered dairy farmer members. These farms are spread out over a large area, nearly 500 square kilometers. Within this area, the Co-op has 4 milk cooling tanks to which the milk is transported, then cooled, and then sent on to dairy processors in Nairobi. However, only ¼ of the farmers live close enough to the cooling tanks to walk their milk to the tanks themselves. The remaining ¾ of farmers rely on 100 milk bike drivers!
So try to picture a man driving a bicycle with a crate tied to the bicycle rack behind the seat, and two 25 litre cans of milk in the crate. Not such a big deal you say? Well, how about another two 25 litre cans of milk straddling the bar between the handle bars and the seat? How many of us would be able to ride a bike loaded down with an extra 100 kg? If you’re dutch, you may have some experience riding a bike with more than one person on it, but people don’t slosh around like milk does in these milk cans. These young men must have very good balance to navigate the twisting hills of Embu district with their milk loads.
Now imagine that it is the rainy season in Kenya and these milk bike drivers are riding up and down these same mountainous paths with slippery mud on them!!! These men are performing a death-defying circus act every day! And they are happy to do so, not just because it is good exercise through a beautiful landscape, but because it is a job that makes them 1 Kenyan shilling per litre. If they transport 100 litres per day, at 60 shillings per dollar, they earn $1.65 per day. They won’t get rich on this, but that will put food on the table for them.
While these milk bike drivers are a solution to a problem pecular to highland Kenya, they create another problem. The cans that they use are plastic and have a small opening with a screw-top. These plastic cans are harder to clean than aluminum cans, like those that were used in Canada in years gone by. Therefore milk quality is a concern. It’s a good thing that many people boil their milk here.
posted by Admin at 1:24 PM
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