I was probably about 9 or 10 years old the first time I watched rugby. It wasn’t a match. I was watching my brothers training at Strathmore School where they were for high school. My mother would pick me up from Lavington Primary School. We’d drive to Strathmore and wait in the parking lot for the training sessions to end. One time I decided to walk over and see what was taking so long. I wondered how it was possible for people to hit each other so hard and not get hurt. I also wondered why they kept doing it. It was very intriguing.

The next time I interacted with rugby was at the university. I watched my brothers play against each other.  University of Nairobi’s Mean Machine versus JKUAT’s Cougars. Machine always won. My mother and I struggled to celebrate the win when the loss was in the same house. We never figured it out.

 It was around this time that my love for the sport began. It wasn’t just watching my brothers play against each other, it was also about watching my mother be a mother to men who played the game. It was in the interaction she had with them together and separately, hearing about their games about how they felt about their teams. It was also in how she interacted with my brothers’ teammates who she got to meet and still remembers to this day.

Through watching my mother and my brothers, I was constantly reminded that even the hardest, fastest, meanest players on the pitch had feelings, insecurities and needs. I learnt the importance of teammates and trust, and I saw what camaraderie looked like.

 My mother loved to know that my brothers were at rugby or with rugby people. Of course like any parent or guardian she worried about my brothers getting hurt, but I think she mostly enjoyed the men my brothers were because of the game and she understood that that space was important for them. As a result, rugby became home for me. It became a safe space and with time I found lots of friendships and professional growth as a member of the rugby fraternity. 

 I served as the Events and Logistics Manager for the Safari Sevens, Africa premier rugby 7s tournament, from 2005 to 2010 or thereabout. Auka Gecheo, who I’d met at Mean Machine through my brother, got me into that.

I was the Venue Manager for the 2007  World Rugby (then IRB) Junior World Rugby Trophy under Peter Nduati’s leadership. The tournament is now referred to as the World Rugby Under 20 Trophy.

I spent 2009 as the Team Manager for the Kenya women’s national teams; the Kenya Lionesses XVs and Kenya Lionesses 7s, taking the Lionesses on tours across the continent. I worked in a team that included coaches Sammy Kemmey and Pritt Nyandatt. Hill and fitness training with the Kenya Lionesses is one of the hardest things I have ever done! 

 In 2009, under Aggrey Chabeda’s leadership I also served as a Tournament Director for the Rugby Super Series, East Africa’s elite rugby franchise tournament. I was the only woman to ever hold this position and worked hard to include women’s games in the weekly match schedule in order to bring some much needed visibility. Before and after that I served as the tournament’s logistics manager from 2007 to 2010. I loved the RSS. There was potential there to really grow the 15s version of the game and I hope that KRU considers adding this tournament back to the fixtures.

 At club level, I served as the chairperson of the Mean Machine Old Boys, a collective of alumni of the University of Nairobi rugby team from 2008 to 2012. How I got there is a blog post of its own, but those were good times! I now sit on the Executive Committee of Kenya Harlequin FC, Kenya’s second oldest rugby club.

Someone asked me why I give so much time to rugby. The simple answer is that rugby has nourished and challenged me, and continues to. I am paying it forward. It has been close to 20 years since I first got involved in rugby administration and I’m just getting started!