Kikuyus from Nyeri called it Beniku. We called it Mahuwa, translation flowers, because that is what pyretherum is. It is a daisy like flower with white petals and a yellow center. It is a shrub plant, with ‘spaghetti’ thin green stems and green leaves with the white flowers forming the crown on top. That combination of very green shrub with white flowers on top made for a beautiful scenery.
There was a time in Nyandarua that Pyrethrum fields were everywhere, extending as far as the eye could see. Those fields looked beautiful because the pyrethrum plant does not grow very tall. It is usually knee high on most adults. The pyretherum flower is used for making insecticides and pesticides.
Picking Pyrethrum: We had 5 or more acres of pyrethrum. Saturday was the day of picking pyrethrum, I guess that was the day the Cooperative Society designated to receive it. When pyrethrum was ready for harvesting, families and laborers descended on these fields and plucked the white flower. One had to be careful to pick only the flower with no part of the stem attached to the flower, otherwise the Cooperative Society rejected your pyrethrum until you clipped off the stems from each flower. That was a whole days job, so we tried to do it right the first time around, otherwise we would answer to our uncompromising parents. We identified the mature flowers by the way they were well spread out without any hint of upwards curving. We tied a basket (Kiondo) around our waist to hold the picked flowers and when full, we emptied into a sisal gunny bag (ikuniya) that was centrally placed.
One good thing is that pyrethrum was light. It did not weigh heavily on us as we continued picking. The only trouble was that, you had to start early in the morning before the sun got too hot, wilting the picked flowers, hence reducing their weight considerably. The early morning moisture on the flowers was good because they weighed more, giving the farmer more money for every kilogram.
