Today’s Karen residential area was born out of a 6,000-acre farm, purchased in 1916 by the Karen Coffee Company which was owned by the Karen Blixen family from Denmark. Six hundred acres of the farm were used for a coffee plantation while 3,400 acres were used by natives for grazing and 2,000 acres of virgin forest were left untouched.
The farm was managed by Europeans but the labour was provided by “squatters”(Africans) who guaranteed the “owners” 180 days of labour, per annum, in exchange for wages and the right to live and graze on the uncultivated lands, which in many cases, was theirs in the first instance before the British laid claim to them.
