MERU, Kenya, Feb 7 - Here around Meru in central Kenya life revolves around the cultivation of khat, a plant with narcotic properties, to such an extent that it has altered the social fabric of local communities.
In Muringene, some 300 kilometres (186 miles) north of Nairobi, the locals live both thanks to khat, or miraa as it is called here, and for the sake of consuming khat.
Most of what they produce is exported to Somalia, where it has been used for centuries mainly by men, or to Britain, which has what is thought to be the largest Somali community in the global diaspora from the war-wracked country.
Several million euros of khat leave the region each year but the paradox, according to the Catholic charity Caritas active here, is the business has had little impact on the villages' standard of living.
"Despite the money from the miraa, the area is very poor. The miraa money doesn't trickle down into the households," the non-government organisation's social development director Joseph M'Eruaki told AFP.
The main reason he puts forward is that the farmers have no influence over khat prices, which are fixed by a handful of Kenyans and Somalis.
Given how lucrative the crop is, children of barely 10 are dropping out of school in large numbers to pick khat.
"They make easy money on the farms and wonder why they should 'waste their time' in school," M'Eruaki said.
The working day runs from 6 am to 9 am.
"When they've finished they hang around for the rest of the day, chewing miraa," he said.
And the money earned early morning has normally gone by evening and, judging by the levels of malnutrition in the region, does not make its way into household food budgets.
Caritas has also voiced concern about the problems attached to having khat as the sole crop and tries to convince farmers to branch out in order to protect themselves from price fluctuations.
The green hills of this region -- Kenya's main khat-growing hub -- are covered with medium-sized trees from which growers pluck new shoots as often as once a month.
Tied into small bunches and often wrapped in banana leaves and then plastic to keep the moisture in and its main active ingredient -- cathinone -- potent, the shoots will be chewed carefully one by one to release the cathinone and the second active ingredient, cathine.
-- 'Slaves on their own land' --