Tea Fields of Kerala
Kerala, India
During my first trip to India, we visited the Tea Fields of Kerala, India. I was in India to create an episode for a Christian Television Network called All Over the World. This series highlighted the work being done by Mission Organizations around the world.
For part of the filming, we visited the Tea Fields of Kerala, to show the slavery that exists in the tea harvesting industry, and the conditions that these workers live in. After filming in the villages and fields we visited the living areas of one of the larger tea plantations. The police were called on us for filming, we left just in time to escape a confrontation.
The first picture in the slide show was a memory I’ll never forget. This man was pleading with us to help him escape. He was showing us his empty hands and kept saying “I have nothing, I will die here”.
We were talking with some of the women as they brought their bales of tea leaves down to the payroll man. They told us how the wages they make for harvesting the tea leaves are never enough to pay for their room and board at the plantations, leaving them continually indebted to the plantation owners. They were essentially slaves with no way out. Some of the younger workers had been born at the plantations, and inherited their parents debt. They did not attend school, and knew nothing of the world outside of the tea fields.
The government officially denies that slavery exists in the plantations.
The living quarters were nothing more than concrete row houses, with multiple people living in these one room slums. No running water, primitive bathrooms and kitchens. Leaky, rusty metal roofs that offered no protection from the rain, heat and cold. Cooking is done over wood fires.
The Christian pastors working in this area often face threats and beatings. They struggle to offer education and meals, usually living in poverty themselves. Help from the western Church is their only source of income and funding.
I had a strange experience here. We had been travelling and filming all over India, I was thoroughly exhausted spiritually, physically and mentally. The Pastors were in a meeting and I had some rare downtime. Despite their warnings about wild animals and snakes, I wanted to go out into the tea fields and sit on a large rock that overlooked the valley to relax and listen to music. I had been out there for some time when I heard rustling and man came running towards me, urging me to come with him quickly. He spoke little english, so I didn’t know what was happening. We got back to the small mud brick church where the other pastors were and they explained to me there was a woman there to see me. I saw a frail elderly woman there who said that God had woken her up at 3 AM and told her to hike almost 20 KM to a nearby village where she would find a white man at the church who could pray for her healing. So she got out of bed and hiked through the night along rugged trails through the mountains to the village where we were. I was the only white man in the village. The rare presence of outsiders in this area had not gone unnoticed by the villagers, workers, police and plantation foremen. The workers told her that there was a white man at the church, so she came to find me. I explained to them that I was not a healer and had no special powers, but she was emphatic that God had told her I should pray for her, so I did. There was no miraculous event or healing that I know of. I prayed for her, she ate some food and then began her long hike back home. I don’t know wether she was healed or not, but I have faith that what happened for a reason.
