Winnie Adipo, a Kenyan woman currently serving in the United States Air Force, carries the emotional scars from four unsuccessful attempts to join the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF).
In an interview at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, where she is stationed, Adipo shared her long-held dream of joining the KDF. This dream was consistently thwarted by pervasive nepotism within the organization.
Despite her relentless efforts, Adipo faced rejection four times. She revealed that high unemployment rates across Kenya meant that military recruitment was often tainted by nepotism and corruption, with recruiters favoring their relatives or those willing to pay substantial bribes.
On her fourth attempt, Adipo was asked to pay a bribe that she couldn’t afford due to her modest upbringing. Her father was a high school agricultural teacher, and her mother was a nurse.
“The recruiter told me, ‘Give me 200,000 shillings and I’ll fix you in.’ I just didn’t have that kind of money, and just like that, my dream was gone,” she recalled.
This rejection was a severe blow to her childhood aspiration of serving her country. Growing up, she had frequently attended the annual military fair in Mombasa, where her desire to join the military was nurtured.
“When I was older, I began to understand the impacts of military service. I saw that it was something bigger than myself and I knew I wanted to join,” Adipo added.
Adipo’s dream finally came true in 2016 when she was recruited by the United States Air Force, although her journey to success was challenging. In 2015, she received an email confirming her acceptance into the US Diversity Visa Program and traveled to Tacoma, Washington, in October of that year.
After months of gathering her documents, a conversation with a driver, who was taking her for standard social security applications, led her to a military recruiter.
“It was so simple I couldn’t believe it. No one was trying to take my money,” she remarked on the ease and fairness of her recruitment process.
Adipo began her career as a health service management expert in the medical department of the police and worked her way up to become a staff sergeant.
