“You have to mas­sage the tree this way before you plant it,” Dr. Kalua said with his char­ac­ter­is­tic wide smile.”

The near­ly two hun­dred guests who had gath­ered at Ngong Road For­est grounds broke into rau­cous laugh­ter. Among them were dozens of army men and women togeth­er with Amb Dr. Mon­i­ca Juma the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Defense and Keri­ako Tobiko, the Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment, Nat­ur­al Resources, and Forestry. Also part of the gath­er­ing were senior mem­bers of the Diplo­mat­ic Corps includ­ing Zainab Hawa Ban­gu­ra Under-Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al & the Direc­tor-Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Nations Office at Nairo­bi (UNON) and Jane Mar­riott, the British High Com­mis­sion­er to Kenya.

Dr. Kalua was demon­strat­ing how to plant a tree. In his hands was the large seedling of cro­ton mega­lo­car­pus, an indige­nous tree with proven bio­fu­el prop­er­ties. Stand­ing next to Dr. Kalua were the two Cab­i­net Sec­re­taries. Togeth­er, they pro­ceed­ed to plant the tree as Dr. Kalua pro­vid­ed a humor­ous run­ning com­men­tary on how to plant trees in the right way.

This tree plant­i­ng event was being held to com­mem­o­rate the inter­na­tion­al wom­en’s day that is held annu­al­ly on March 8th. In her keynote address lat­er on, after almost two hun­dred indige­nous trees had been plant­ed, Amb. Dr. Mon­i­ca Juma paid trib­ute to the resilience of women and not­ed how they are occu­py­ing crit­i­cal lead­er­ship posi­tions in the Kenya Defense Forces. Indeed, Pres­i­dent Uhu­ru Keny­at­ta has made his­to­ry as the only Pres­i­dent to appoint female Defense Min­is­ters not once but twice.

As we cel­e­brate Inter­na­tion­al Wom­en’s Day, let us con­tin­ue to cel­e­brate and sup­port all women. Dr. Kalua remains ful­ly com­mit­ted to this.

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