DRC, Day 6: Going into the Weekend

Yay! It’s Friday! The last day before the weekend…in a town where there’s nothing to do… Oh, well.

                

We got an early start to the day to go to the women’s sensing session, which was actually pretty well attended, with about 43 female soldiers, officers, and police. It's a very civil affairs thing, and it was facilitated by a woman from Dyncorp, which is doing the civil military operations training during the exercise as well. She had the women go around the room and ask what they did in the FARDC (or police). There were quite a few nurses and nursing students, but a lot from the “regular army” as well. Then she asked the reasons for joining the military, which is pretty similar to why people join the military in the States—no money for education, hope to get training, want to serve/defend the country, etc. The last question was about what they hoped to get out of joining the military and what they still hoped to accomplish, and that opened up the floodgates. Almost universally, they said that the opportunities for the good training—English language training, computers, etc—was always given to the men, because they assume the women would mess it up. They said they aren’t treated as equals, there’s nobody to help with the childcare when they’re at work, nobody respects them, and on and one. They said it’s a problem with the leadership, that the views of women in the military come from the top down.

During the sensing session

After

                

This was confirmed when, after the sensing session when we were getting a picture, the general drove up, saw that the sensing session had already happened, and told me that I should work with the women to teach them how to be better soldiers, because they all think they’re there to “service the men.” I really didn’t know what to say, but it definitely made me believe the women who said that they get no respect from the leadership.

Talking to BG Moustafa

                

After we were done with that, we all headed to Banana Naval Base (where the Congo meets the Atlantic), to give the Navy doctors a chance to shake hands with the navy people (the navy that has no boats…), and then the Navy doctors hopped on the Kin-Avia flight back to Kinshasa, while MAJ Lang and I get to suffer through a weekend in Muanda with nothing to do. It’s really not fair, but I guess that’s life. What I’m really bummed out about is that I’ve now been to DRC three times, and I still haven’t seen the bonobos (apes that are only found in DRC; there’s a reserve about an hour outside Kinshasa). I’m sure they’ll find something for us to do in Muanda… or I’ll just take a lot of naps and do a lot of reading. One of those, I’m sure.