We have a friend who is working short term at a macadamia nut plantation (not sure if that’s the correct word) cracking macadamia’s.  If you’ve never seen a raw macadamia nut you may be surprised:

photo from www.buzzle.com

The green shell is hard and needs to be cracked open, then the brown shell is extremely hard and that too needs to be cracked open until you finally reach the delicious (in my opinion) inside.  I found this out when some students at a school we were helping knew I liked macadamia nuts so they proceeded to crack some for me.  They used large stones to get inside each layer and it took them all afternoon for a handful of nuts.

Now, our friend recently came to visit and told us about her job.  She works all day on a machine (manual machine, no power) pulling a lever to crack open the shells.  If she gets a whole nut that goes in one pile but if the nut splits the halves go in another pile.  At the end of the day she gets 20/-ksh per kilo of the half pieces and 40/-ksh per kilo of the whole pieces.  Since she is new to this procedure she hasn’t quite got “the touch” to get mostly whole nuts and is gathering approximately 2-3 kgs per day.  She did tell us the “experts” are able to crack 13 kg for the day.

To give you some reference….1 kilo equals approximately 2 pounds and 80/-ksh equals approximately $1.  You do the math…ok, I’ll do it for you.  On an average day she’ll crack about 3 kg (6 pounds) of macadamias and her wage will be around 120/-ksh ($1.50) for the day.

C4KK assists her by sponsoring 4 of her children in school but she still needs to pay rent, buy food and other necessities on 120/-ksh per day.  Maybe the next time you eat a macadamia nut you’ll say a prayer for her as she struggles to support herself and her family.

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