Parklands was to be a pineapple plantation

Allen Charles Harries family tried growing the crops in Parklands

Thika is Kenya’s pineapple town. Okay, pineapples are also grown in surrounding regions such as Gatundu. But Thika’s pineapples take the errr....cake! It is Thika that Kenya Canners (now Cirio Del Monte), Kenya’s largest exporter of canned pineapples, call home.

By the way, at independence, pineapples were considered special fruits and to manage the crop, the government of President Kenyatta I looked out for a fruit company and found one in Hawaii, where American firm, Del Monte, was then operating. It had an appetite for expansion to Africa where labour was a dime a dozen, and as enticement, the government took over Anglo-French Sisal farm and leased it to them in 1965. That was besides restricting the  pineapples to growers approved by the Canning Crops Board at the time.