Testimonial from Adeline Mutembanema

“What are you doing in two weeks?”

In the autumn of 2016, Adeline had recently finished her graduate diploma in population health and risk assessment, including an internship at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, when she took a phone call from human resources at CFMWS. They asked if she’d received an email inviting her to a training and selection course with Deployment Support in Halifax that would be starting in a few weeks. 

“Somehow I missed the email, so they said, ‘we can do the interview tomorrow over the phone,’” Adeline recalls. “I didn’t know what I was signing up for until I showed up in Halifax a couple of weeks later. I don’t think I had even applied for the Deployment Support position.”

Adeline says all this with a laugh. While she may not have known what to expect, she admits she was ready for adventure. A lifelong athlete – specializing in basketball, touch football, and track and field -- Adeline was working as a fitness trainer in Ottawa. She was excited to learn more about CFMWS and the CAF.

“I had worked as a summer camp counselor on the Uplands base with PSP when I was a student at the University of Ottawa in 2009, completing my undergraduate in biomedical and health sciences. But all I knew back then was how to play with kids. I knew nothing about this organization, nor about the soldiers or ranks or deployment.”

Training and selection – an eye-opener

Adeline admits the Deployment Support Team  may have been a little surprised to see her rock up at the naval base in Halifax a few weeks later. 

“I showed up with my hair all fancy, my nails done,” she says with a laugh. “They probably wondered, ‘who is this Adeline girl? Is she legit?’”

Adeline was grouped with approximately 30 other fitness experts, more than half of whom were internal candidates, familiar with the organization. Immediately she was impressed, not only by the rigor of the fitness training and the education about military life, but also by how much individualized observation and attention was paid to her by the team.

“They’re watching you, observing you the entire time,” says Adeline. “They’re also looking at how you interact with others in the training (and selection course) and who would be a good match to work with you. Who you deploy with is a big deal, because your team can make or break a deployment.”

Mostly, she felt comfortable with the people, the training and the accommodation.

“We slept at the base accommodation, which felt like a hotel,” she says. “A big part of the training was getting used to being on a base with military personnel, eating at the mess with them and preparing for emergencies. One night they woke us in the middle of the night to get our necessities, ‘evacuate’ and then sleep in the gym on cots, only to be woken up first thing in the morning for physical training.”

A shadow of doubt

There was one point during the training that Adeline panicked and thought about packing it in. 

“I hadn’t had time, honestly, to read the whole information package beforehand,” she says. “We did some training on a naval ship and the minute they mentioned we had to do survival training, near water, I went to the director and told her, ‘I can’t swim, I cannot be on a naval ship. I’m not cut out for this!’”

Adeline was reassured that there was no obligation to deploy to a naval ship.  

“They want you to succeed,” says Adeline. “I really liked that they sat you down and ask you the honest questions about where you felt comfortable going and who you want to deploy with. They give you a background, a synopsis, of each potential deployment and I was able to be honest with them and with myself about what I can handle and what I cannot.”

In the end, the only place Adeline felt comfortable was Latvia. Born in Rwanda and Congo, and raised in Zimbabwe, Adeline had moved to Ottawa with her family in the early 2000s at 15 years old. She wasn’t comfortable being in a conflict zone. 

Europe, at the time, felt safe.

“I had lived in Europe before. I didn’t really know where Latvia was, but because I had lived in Switzerland and France before, I thought it might be similar,” she laughs. “So I said, ‘yeah, give me something cute like Latvia.’”

Time to deploy

Eight months later, Adeline received another call, this time to ask if she could be ready in a little under three weeks to deploy to Latvia. 

She was given a kit list and permission to bring three bags including any personal items.

“I am very specific about my bedding,” Adeline says. “One bag was just full of sheets and pillows and blankets. I knew they would provide that, but it was important to me to have these comforts.”

After accelerated medical and wellness checks, she arrived in Riga to a welcoming group.

“Fitness, Sports, and Recreation Coordinators that had been on my training in Halifax were there to meet me at the airport. It was nice to see familiar faces.” 

They soon arrived at the NATO base and Adeline set up in her eight-women, cabin-type dorm facility, with one common area and a bathroom.

“I was a little skeptical about one bathroom for eight women,” Adeline says with a laugh.

“And again, I didn’t read all the information. I hadn’t realized it was on a NATO base with other countries. So I get there and there are Italians and Spanish and people from all other countries and this excites me again.”

“I love to travel. I love other cultures. To me, it was even better than I had imagined.”

Work, leisure, mess

Among the first Fitness, Sports, and Recreation Coordinators to arrive at the base in Latvia, Adeline and her small team were given responsibility for helping to set up the gym facility, including the layout and equipment organization. They did a lot of physical training outdoors, until finally, in November, the gym was ready.

“Once the gym opened, there were thousands of people coming through every week. When it came to instructing, we would train literally anyone who booked us. So I trained the Spanish, the Canadians, the Slovenians, all the nations.”

She cautions that during the workdays, there is little downtime, with the demands to interact with people at meals and even in the private space.

“For me, I’m an extrovert, so it was okay,” says Adeline. “It’s not to say that introverts can’t do this, but you’ve got to know your capacity and when you’ve hit your limit.”

Adeline made a point to sit with different military personnel during meals at the mess.

“They would ask me, why aren’t you sitting with the other fitness staff, with your colleagues?” says Adeline.

“For me, I wanted to connect with people. I really believe in knowing your client. It was an opportunity for me to sit down and get to know people, understand the military setting. It’s why I was there.”

Deployment Support – “Why wouldn’t you do it?”

With two deployments to Latvia under her belt, Adeline says internal candidates should definitely look at this as a career-boosting opportunity. Even if the work is demanding, there could be time to explore the local areas – in her case, cafes, shopping malls and castles in Riga – and a two-week paid travel opportunity mid-way through deployment.  

“You get to travel, to see the world, to experience different cultures, and not on your own dime.”

“It’s such a great way to level-up in your career,” says Adeline. 

“Most people I know who have deployed eventually get promoted when they come back. I tell everyone just do it. It’s such a great opportunity. Why wouldn’t you do it?”