Miracle makers

The oculist, then 45, and her 42 colleagues were all medical staff at the 202nd People's Liberation Army (PLA) Hospital in Shenyang of Northeast China's Liaoning Province. Liu and 12 others in the medical team were the first batch of Chinese women peacekeeping soldiers.

Before leaving China, they had all undergone a three-month training program to improve their military skills and become familiar with local conditions.

However, even such rigorous training could not quite prepare them for the adjustments they had to make to local conditions.

"Upon arrival, we were surprised to find that our colleagues in the earlier batch had got totally sun-burnt in just one week," nurse Zhang Yi said in a recent interview. But soon, she said, she herself suffered the effects of the blazing sun.

The Chinese team had to reckon with not just strange afflictions but also the threat of possible attacks by rebels and armed robbers. In the very first week, four members of the team came down with malaria.

With no access to a kitchen at first, they often squatted around a brick hearth to share food. "Vegetables were so precious that we had to share a small dish of tomatoes or cucumber among several people," Zhang says.

But against all odds, they managed to build a modern hospital from scratch. The doctors and nurses unloaded all the 12 containers of cargo by themselves.

"No machines, no electricity. Everyone unloaded 3 tons of cargo with their bare hands. Women worked just as hard as men," recalls Liu Feng, a nurse now in her late 30s. "We installed every medical appliance and hammered in every nail."

The hospital near the airport was surrounded by grass that was more than a meter tall. Anti-government forces were camped just meters away, with guns often pointed at the hospital. Every night, the camp was plunged into total darkness, with the only lights in the area being those of the hospital.

But the Chinese team adapted to the hardships and provided the best possible medical care to more than 2,000 peacekeeping staff from 49 countries and regions, and also provided local residents with emergency care.

At first, few Swedish soldiers came to check their teeth, because many of them were used to their own personal dentists in Sweden. But this changed after one of them consulted with dentist Li Caiyun. Before long, Li made many Swedish friends.

One soldier even returned to the DRC from Sweden after completing his peacekeeping mission, just to get his teeth checked by Li, she recalls. A Tunisian soldier who was not covered by the Chinese team, wrote on his ID card: "If I am hurt, please send me to the Chinese medical team".

Not only the doctors' skills but also the nurses' services won over the peacekeeping staff. "I remember once, five patients came to our hospital, and later we found that they were of five different nationalities," Li says.

A weak South African AIDS patient dubbed the nurses "Chinese angels" after Yang Wei and the others took turns toweling him down and chatting with him before he was sent back home.

The Chinese doctors also treated locals such as a man with 90 percent burns and a woman bitten by a hippopotamus. The grateful locals would almost always greet the Chinese with a friendly "Ni hao", Liu Xin says.

From April 2003 to December 2005, the first medical team and the three batches that followed tended to more than 5,000 patients, 31 of whom were seriously ill or injured. The United Nations called the team "the best peacekeeping unit in DRC".

These honors came from great personal sacrifice though, especially for those who had left behind children.

Liu Xin says she feels sorry that she could not see off her son, who entered college that year, and, Liu Feng says she often cried at the thought of her twin daughters in kindergarten.

"But we were like a big family," says officer He Xiaojian. To celebrate holidays, the women would hold their own fashion show, wearing costumes made from garbage bags and newspapers.

"I once wore a dress made of mosquito curtain but couldn't take it off after the show," recalls Yang, with a chuckle. The Chinese women were very popular among the UN peacekeeping units.

During the interview with China Daily, they said the honors that came their way were precious, but what they treasured most was the bittersweet life as peacekeepers - of a time of shared happiness and close friendships.

(China Daily 07/24/2007 page23)