Fifty-one years ago, far from his teaching duties, Ernest Cheruiyot Lang’at and his wife Ludiah took their nine daughters to their tea farm in Kaptabeswet village in Kericho county, teaching them to plant tea.
With a combination of diplomacy and patience, he taught his girls how to plant tea seedlings - perpendicular to the slope for best exposure.
The family farm grew from a quarter-acre with 1,000 bushes in 1961 to an 80-acre plantation, eventually becoming Earnestea Limited.
Cheruiot became an ambassador in the Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Moi administrations. He was the father-in-law of political analyst Mutahi Ngunyi.
He was also the father-in-law of former Energy Cabinet Secretary Davis Chirchir.
He has died at the age of 88.
He is survived by daughters, grandchildren and great grandchildren. He will be buried on Friday at his farm in Kericho after a service at the Nairobi Baptist Church.
In 1974 President Kenyatta appointed Cheruiyot to represent Kenya in the USSR at the height of the cold war. He served in Moscow for nine years.
President Moi then appointed him ambassador to Sweden and the Nordic countries from 1983 to 1985.
Prior to his appointment as ambassador, he worked as Kenya's education attache in Washington, DC, in the 1960s and 70s.
He was appointed Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources until his retirement in 1987.
Cheruiyot was chairman of the board of the Kenya Research Foundation in Kericho until 2003.
A lover of literature, his family called him "an eternal student" who always read, did research and studied new ways of farming and processing tea, coffee and exotic fruits.
His master's thesis from Howard University, Washington, DC, explored education in Kenya since colonial times.
(Edited by V. Graham)
