Muhathi is a five-hectare coffee estate located in Kiambu County, in Kenya’s central highlands. It is owned by Peris Wambui Karugondo, who runs it with the help of her son Sam Gicho Wambui. Muhathi is a single parcel part a larger family-owned property, which was inherited by Peris and her siblings on their parents’ passing and divided into three plots: Dagitu, Muhathi and Ndocha. Peris and her siblings, Danson and Geoffrey, manage their shambas (Swahili for farm) independently and share a wet mill (or factory, as they are known in Kenya) which was built by their father in the 1980s. Each sibling processes and markets their coffee as a separate lot.

Like many coffee farms in the region, the estate was established in the early 1960s, when the siblings’ grandparents planted 100 trees in the wake of the 1952 Mau Mau uprising and the resulting land reforms, which allowed Kenyan nationals to own and plant coffee farms. Prior to these reforms, all coffee estates in the country were owned by British exporters who strictly regulated the industry to exclude African Kenyans.