She is a casual worker. "Every two months we are fired for two weeks, then we are hired again by the same person" she says. The pay "is not good".
Agnes is paid per kilo of tea, so the more she picks the more she earns. She can gather over 80 kilos of tea on a good day, but during the dry season sometimes she is only able to pick as little as nine.
This means she can take home anything from 386 Kenyan shillings a day when production is high to 43 Kenyan Shillings, just 32 pence, a day during the low season.
With four children to support Agnes finds this income does not go far. The average family in Kenya needs 100 Kenyan Shillings a day just for food. "I have been here two years and the pay has not gone up", she says.
"I came here from another farm. There I was also being paid the same. The owner heard we wanted to join a union. He sacked all of us. He brought about five lorries of soldiers who surrounded us and asked us to vacate the houses. So we left. They didn’t even pay us our dues", she remembers.
Agnes has never heard of Kenya's minimum wage.
