by Jessica Hatcher, The Guardian, UK – A Kalashnikov, a cartridge magazine, some spare casings and a pink plastic hand mirror are strewn across Francine Bwizabule Muhimuzi’s roughly made bed at the staff accommodation on the edge of Virunga national park. She is one of the first tranche of women who last year became rangers – “gardiens du parc” – at Africa’s oldest national park.
Muhimuzi has just returned from a week stationed halfway up Mount Nyiragongo, one of the world’s most active volcanoes. “I’d see the volcano as a child from Goma, but I never thought I’d go up there,” she says. Today, she makes the 2,000m ascent, Kalashnikov on her shoulder, without breaking a sweat. “There is not yet equality, but in the park, we see it is improving, because they have begun to recruit women.”
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