First Ever Woman Recruited to KDF

Former Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) Special Forces soldiers Byron Adera and Wairimu Mukuria, on Friday, October 18 revealed the rigorous training the soldiers go through during a show on NTV.

Mukuria, the first-ever woman psychologist to be recruited to KDF, mentioned what she went through during the training.

"I went with a backpack and a tracksuit and had to shave first before I continued," Major General (Rtd) Mukuria mentioned.

Mukuria reported that she also had to withstand tough questions from her colleagues during the training.

"First of all you don't sleep and you have one uniform you have to wear every day while making sure it was clean all the time," she narrated.

She claimed that despite having been recruited as a psychologist, she had to train just like the other officers.

"Every day we were in the mud with the irony being that the supervisors wanted all of us to be clean," Mukuria added.

Wairimu, who dealt with soldiers who were traumatised, noted that it was not easy to recover from the training and warfare the officers went through.

"Transition becomes more difficult because Kenyans like to suppress the pain in drinks, excess sex and other drugs. This is also caused by the country lack of resources to solve these issues," she concluded.

Adera disclosed on that Special Forces recruits were trained as cadets and had to go through tough tests that weighed them emotionally, psychologically and physically.  

"A special officer is built to operate well beyond the capability of a conventional soldier. It is the toughest training ever," he confirmed.

The officer revealed that the training was beyond human limits and that every minute of the process was hell on earth for many of them. 

"There is boxing day which is part of the cadet training on the fifth day where all recruits fight each other," Adera revealed. 

He also revealed that the most difficult thing in training was the psychological warfare and what one had to go through beyond body pain.

"Sleep is not in the program for the first three months. You had to sit down and shine boots for the longest time with instructors inspecting the process," Adera claimed.

According to Adera, the first-ever Kenyan to be recruited in the Special Forces, sometimes they had to sleep while standing and running, blindly following the lead soldiers for navigation.

"The parachute regiment was the most feared unit in the force as they jumped from planes and we had to push Land Rovers for six kilometres at a certain point of the training," he affirmed.