The Republic of ARMY

21. VIP

I wore a dress I had bought while visiting my mum. It was a decent, dark green outfit that went to my knees. I wore it with a black skinny belt and three-inch heeled shoes.

My hair looked very clean and smelt really good, thanks to my decision to wash and dry it early in the morning (at 3.00 am, the witching hour). I drank through all the sachets of instant coffee the hotel provided to stay awake.

Jittery from excitement, and a possible coffee high, I had breakfast and made my way over to the venue. After registering and receiving my goodie bag, I made my way into the hall and occupied the seat reserved for me.

The conference began a while later, with introductions, then the Keynote speech delivered by none other by Dr. Ban Ki Moon. I noted everything he spoke about, and smiled as I eagerly awaited the presentations.

Tea break came sooner than I expected, and so we found time to mingle. A lot of the people who I had met at Switzerland were in Bhutan too, so it seemed like some kind of reunion.

The next presenters were mostly male, and had amazing projects they were doing to help the environment. One of them had started a repopulation programme for an endangered bird species in Argentina, another one had found ways to reduce green house gas emissions from beef farms, and there was even one who had come up with a device to measure the daily carbon footprint of whoever wore it.

A few more presentations like that, and it was finally my turn to talk. Truth be told, I was extremely nervous. Thinking about how far we had come though made all the difference.

"Good morning to all of you. I am Raina Mtenyo from UNEP, Kenya. I am very pleased to encounter so many of you in this conference. I have learned a lot so far, and I look forward to learning even more."

There was applause as I bowed my head quietly and nodded. I could see Dr. Ban smiling as he nodded too. The Japanese and Chinese representatives did the same too. I smiled before looking up again.

"I have been working with other countries and territories on land reclamation projects that target arid and semi-arid areas, a few almost desert areas, and generally carrying out afforestation and reafforestation projects on behalf of UNEP. Whoa, that was a long sentence!" Everyone laughed at that little shade.

"Back to the story at hand, I had let my imagination run away with me from time to time, but not as much as I did when I imagined attempting to afforest part of the Sahara desert. See, I know that this desert was once a wondrous grassland and forested area, but that was due to the earth's tilting and a few other thing I would not want to get into at the moment... Or maybe I can get into it at some point, later."

I mused for a little while, before turning back to the listening audience. "The Sahara is actually very fertile, and every year, there are winds that sweep the sands across African countries, the Atlantic ocean, and into the Amazon's," here I showed them a few pictures of the satellite images depicting what I had said.

"Earth is always going to be a mystery. Very little grows in the Sahara, but these same soils enrich the Amazon's. If that isn't amazing, then I don't know what is."

"The project was something I came up with after an afforestation project in a northern and arid area of Kenya around Marsabit town. It has so far been a success and the community has chipped in to take care of the trees we planted together."

"The Bir Tawil project is very similar but also slightly different to projects UNEP has taken on before. This is because Bir Tawil is a labelled a 'No Man's Land' and belongs to neither Egypt nor Sudan. Secondly, it is very hot, and is an extension of the Sahara Desert. It does receive some rainfall, but it isn't as much as areas around the Nile. Thirdly, it is two hundred kilometres from the sea."

"This region has a few mountains, but most of it is looks flat and sandy. There is actually very little people knew before our arrival at Bir Tawil. There isn't an existing community of people, except if you're counting the military patrols at the borders. We made sure to engage them in positive environmental practices when we arrived."

"In the past six months, we have planted over four thousand trees, and more are still being received and transported thanks to a lot of UNEP friends. Our website set up a tree donation for this project and the response has been very good. We also enlisted the help of a few innovators to tap into the resources Bir Tawil has."

I showed them pictures of the Solar farm, and the Fognets which were helping us grow our food crops. I highlighted a few other projects we were doing to help in water conservation. There were a lot of before and after pictures.

"We aim to reduce our carbon emissions significantly as we work on this project. We planted a lot of food crops, shrubs, ornamental and fruit trees when we had some rain, and we managed to tap more than a hundred litres of water when the little streams from the Nile flowed towards our settlement. The only problem we have now is evaporation."

"We have also dug a number of boreholes to assist with water supply especially to our tree nurseries and farms. We plan to dig five more in the near future. We are also going to bring in a lot more indigenous trees from local regions with oases. We have really played around with the idea of having an artificial one, or a kind of reservoir of water from the Nile's seasonal floodings. However, these are just ideas we are playing around with, mostly because it will increase the incidence of malaria cases within our little village."

"All in all, we are constantly going to approach afforestation in this area with multiple and unified attacks. Our research team is always working on new and dynamic plans to make this project a success."

I showed a few more photos of our green houses, tree nurseries, mulching using the stalks from our first maize crop, the camels' enclosure, solar power generation, the wind farm, and more pictures of tree planting. I quickly concluded my speech after that, much to everyone's disapproval.

After the presentation, I got an amazing round of applause from the audience. I felt flustered and could only bow as I blushed to myself. Pictures were taken, handshakes were exchanged, and a few questions were posed much later. I answered them and invited them to join or contribute in whatever way they could to the success of the project.

It is safe to say that for the rest of the conference that week, I was treated like a VIP. I even received a pledge of trees from the Bhutan government.

My trip was a big success.