For the love of khat: 70,000 hectares devoted to growing this plant

Miraa on sale at a street in Nairobi. Photo: David Gichuru, Standard

The dark tan leaves of the miraa tree, their flexible branches bent by years of human weight pulling at them during harvesting, dot the Nyambene highlands in Meru County.

Each day, hundreds of residents jam the constituency’s shopping centres and large markets to trade in these twigs which rake in a fortune for the region. In fact, money circulation here is better than anywhere else in the cash crop growing region of the central highlands.