Nyandarua milk had one buyer only. KCC. The Kenya Co-operative Creameries Ltd. The closest KCC plant was in Nyahururu, some 35 kilometers away. Our Cooperative Society had a standing contract with a wealthy Mukurino who owned a fleet of trucks (rori). He was from the Sheba area, slightly past the OlKalou District Hospital. I will tell you more about Mukurino later. His trucks collected milk from designated collection centers and delivered it to KCC Nyahururu by 9am every day of the year, January 1st to December 31st. After delivering the milk, the truck came back the same route later that afternoon bringing the empty milk cans to their respective owners.
The collection centers were along one major murram road that traversed the middle section of our Settlement Scheme. The truck made a circular loop starting from the edge of OlKalou town past the Post Office, climbed the murram road that headed to Tumaini, branched off at gwa Kibarioni to enter our Settlement Scheme, headed towards Munyeki area, then looped its way back to the Nairobi Nyahururu highway near Chakareri. Their last collection stop was a place called gwa Gataliani (the Italian village), on the Nairobi Nyahururu highway just before entering OlKalou town.
The collection center nearest to our farm was somewhere in the middle of that loop and the scheduled time for the truck to arrive there was 7am, give or take a few minutes, but I can tell you, they were pretty punctual. The truck followed that route, stopping at those designated Collection Centers, at those designated times every morning of every day of the year without fail. It was the farmer’s job to ferry their milk to the Collection Center nearest to their farm, along that designated route if they planned on having their milk picked up for delivery to KCC Nyahururu. Tough, but they found a way.
The Cooperative Society sent out their clerks (Karani ka iriya) to those collection centers to weigh the milk and issue receipts for record keeping. This was done before the trucks arrived to collect the milk. The trucks stopped very briefly at each Collection Center, just long enough to load the milk cans. They never waited for no one.
