Back in the comfort of home, Megan Hunter is sleeping well these days.
Having taken on a new role as clinical team lead at Blue Pine Primary Health Clinic on Seventh Avenue, her daily work as a registered nurse is challenging, but nothing like the chaos of overseeing a Doctors Without Borders health clinic in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Democracy rarely applies to the people in a war-torn country plagued by violence, corruption, disease and malnutrition. The former Belgian colony is considered one of Africa's most dangerous places. For five years, government forces supported by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe have been fighting rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda. For 18 months, Hunter was a world away from her family in Prince George, but her chance to serve the people of Congo was a call of duty she could not resist.
"There are huge needs and there's a lot that can be done, so it's very satisfying workwise," said Hunter, 34, who returned to Canada in mid-August. "People are usually appreciative that outsiders are willing to come and give them a hand in what is invariably a difficult time for them. Conflict in Eastern Congo has basically been simmering since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
"This was the second time I've worked in that part of the eastern Congo, so it was nice to be back and see some of the staff I'd worked with in the past. But at the same time it was a little bit sad because in the time I was there, they had a peace agreement [signed in 2009] that fell apart and they've fallen back into a conflict."
Doctors Without Borders is known by its French name, Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF). French and Swahili are the two most commonly-spoken languages in Congo, and Hunter's language training as a French immersion student for four years as a high school student growing up in Kingston, Ont., proved invaluable.
Hunter knew long before she graduated nursing at UNBC in 2002 she wanted to use her medical skills to see the world and MSF offered that opportunity. After working in several northern B.C. aboriginal communities as a health nurse, her first foreign posting was in Darfur, Sudan in September 2004. She's also worked in Somalia, Sri Lanka, New Guinea, Uganda, and Bangladesh.
On her most recent trip to Congo, Hunter was based in Bukavu, a city of 700,000, where she served as MSF's head of mission for the South Kivu province. She was hired for her organizational skills, not as a hands-on nurse, and had the responsibility of arranging security to protect the health clinic and staff and one hospital and four primary care centres, including 120 Congolese heath workers, 300 support staff and 25 foreign doctors and nurses. Hunter has a masters degree in diplomacy and international studies from the University of London, which helped her build relationships with government officials, military services, and rebel forces in the area.
"Usually, where we work, we keep in contact with the armed groups for security," said Hunter. "We can only work in places like that if all of the people running around with guns know we're there and are OK with the fact we're there. If they don't want us to be there, then we start to have problems.
"The bulk of what we see is normal health care needs, even in the midst of a conflict situation. Certainly, we go through phases where there's fighting nearby where we would see war wounded."
Mass rape is prevalent in eastern Congo and has been for 15 years, prompting the United Nations to declare the country the "rape capital of the world." Armed rebels have taken over pro-government areas of eastern Congo where police or armed forces security is lacking, and thousands of women have been raped. In March alone, a hospital in Bukavu treated 897 rape cases.
Hunter's first experience in Congo in 2009 was working in a clinic located 800 metres from the frontlines of the war. On one bad day of fighting, troops were using the corners of the brick wall compound of the treatment centre for cover as they shot at their enemies.
"All of the cholera patients in the treatment centre were lying on the ground, which is not what you want for infection control," said Hunter. "We definitely had some tricky security situations when I was there when the fighting started again. In April [2012], there was a big group that deserted from the big military base in one of the towns we had a project in. In the chaos, as that group left, some people broke in with guns and robbed the compound."
In Congo, 4.9 per cent of the population (1.3 million people) have HIV/AIDS. Measles and cholera are prevalent and Hunter also witnessed an outbreak of mumps. A cholera epidemic in 2011 killed 40 people and that continues to be a problem in a country in which only 27 per cent of the rural population has access to treated drinking water. The problem flares up at the end of the dry season, when people are forced to drink out of depleted lakes.
"Cholera is there all the time and we had to open eight or nine cholera treatment centres which we moved through the area as the outbreak moved on," said Hunter.
Malaria is not uncommon, especially in the lower elevations. Hunter contracted the disease in February 2011 in the South Sudan. Recognizing the symptoms, she caught it early and underwent treatment immediately, but it still knocked her off her feet for five days.
After eight years off and on working outside of Canada, Hunter has come to the end of the line as a humanitarian health worker. She won't rule out another short-term MSF assignment but says that won't happen anytime soon.
"Eight years of living out of a suitcase is enough," Hunter said.
"People who do aid work longer term I think end up splitting the world into two worlds in their minds," she said. "There's the world I live, in the MSF, where there's fighting and people die of diseases they don't die of here anymore, and then you come back to this world and you separate them in your mind."
Hunter was a competitive biathlete from 2000-2004 and since her return to snow country she's started training on the shooting range again. The sound of rifle shots still trigger memories of people firing guns in anger at other people, and she won't miss those all-too-real experiences.
"My favourite part about being here now is I can go to bed at night without the lingering fear in the back of my mind about security problems, and whether I'll get a phone call at 3 a.m. because there are armed men in the compound."
