Roses are red, Kenyans are blue

Across Europe on Valentine’s Day, lads will present their ladies with red roses, a gesture of appreciation — (or attempt to get out of the doghouse / hope for a good night kiss on the first date) — that will have been directly affected by the ongoing violence in Kenya. Huh? How? More than a third of all cut flowers sold in Europe are imported from Kenya.

The beautiful East African nation has been a stable point in a rocky neighborhood, as it is bordered by Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia. The Great Lakes region of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi are just a 2 to 3 hours flight away over Lake Victoria. The three largest engines of Kenya’s economy are tourism, tea and horticulture. Nightly flights to European capitals make it possible for Geert in Amsterdam to buy a dozen roses for his wife, with those roses sourced in Africa just a few days earlier.

So, tourists are switching plans for their Kenyan safari, going instead to neighboring Tanzania or 2000 miles down the continent to South Africa. The floral industry is looking for ways to make some headway in the middle of chaos. Jane Ngige, head of the Kenya Flower Council, explained “We are arranging for armed police escorts if the roads are blocked again and we might even have to airlift flowers out.”

A floral airlift. Instead of exporting 45,000 fresh flowers each day, Kenyan floral producer Mahmud Abdulla was having difficulty managing half of that number. “I don’t have the flowers. Next week is the busiest of the year and many of the other farms are going to struggle too. Maybe we can recover by Mother’s Day but who knows?”

Thanks go to Rob Crilly of The Times of London, whose piece this morning provided me with the quotes.