Almost five years after Mount Nyiragongo in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) erupted and left 120,000 homeless a group of SA Army Engineers are heading there to claim back the town's airport from the volcano.
 
About 203 sappers, as the engineers are also known, were preparing for this task, one of the biggest ever undertaken by the engineering formation, in Bethlehem this week.
 
They will leave for De Brug next week from where they fly to the DRC to be deployed as part of the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission there.
 
"I think we'll start the job, but it would take several more deployments before it would be finished," said Major Jaco Smit, the squadron leader of the deployment to the DRC.
 
Mount Nyiragongo erupted in January 2002, destroying hundreds of houses and the airport in Goma and left 45 dead and about 120,000 homeless. The volcano still has a lava lake in its crater but has not erupted since.
 
"That is why the UN has waited so long to rehabilitate the airport, the volcanologist could only assure us now that the volcano is stable," said Smit.
 
Just to make sure, the engineers would also build obstacles to redirect the lava flow, should the volcano erupt again.
 
"It worked in 2002. There are pictures of people whose properties were in the middle of the flow, but whose garden and other walls redirected the flow. You can see the green grass growing in the middle of the lava flows," Smit said.
 
Goma is one of the key towns in the Eastern DRC and the UN has constructed a temporary airport, but the runway is to short for the larger aircraft -- hence the call to the South Africans to rehabilitate the Goma Airport runway.
 
The engineers will also purify drinking water for the UN troops in the eastern DRC.
 
"We purify and provide up to 80,000 litres of water a day," Smit said.
 
They will also clear mines, dispose of bombs, and maintain and even build UN bases and those of the new Congolese Defence Force.
 
The engineers have been over stretched providing support to deployments not only in the DRC, Burundi and the Sudan but also at home.
 
"Engineers in the defence force are a scarce resource to be used responsibly," said Major Mark Edwards of the SA Army Engineering Formation.
 
He said the formation was increasingly recruiting reserve force soldiers.
 
As such 19 Field Engineering Regiment, a reserve force unit in Durban, would for the first time ever be deployed abroad on a peacekeeping mission with the permanent force.
 
"It is part of the one-force strategy to have reserves and permanent force members treated equally, trained equally and used equally," Edwards said.
 
The Army hopes that in the future it would consist of only a core group of permanent members and the largest group would consist of reserves.
 
Corporal Viwe Mngambi, 22, is one of the reservists to be deployed in the DRC.
 
"I am a little scared but we are taught to be cautious and alert and also I'm excited to see the people and the country," said Mngambi.
 
She is employed full-time by a large cellphone company who has given her six months leave for the DRC mission.
 
Mngambi, who has never been away from home longer than a month, is not the only soldier with a full-time job outside the defence force.
 
Lunglo Nodada works for the personnel department of a large hospital in KwaZulu-Natal. He as also been given time of by his employers but it is his family who is worried most about his deployment.
 
"It difficult to explain to them that I would be safe. I must also convince them that I'm going there to build not to fight," Nodada said.
 
Edwards said although the number of reservist is still small they are planning to recruit about 150 members each year for the next three years.
 
They would receive their basic training and then their engineering training from the SA Army engineers before being deployed as part of South Africa's foreign commitments.

Sapa
 
Publisher: I-Net Bridge
Source: I-Net Bridge