He was visibly nervous, perhaps traumatized. He had just been on a deployment to Afghanistan, and it looked like he had been having a rough time. The officers of the European Union Security Assistance Mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (EUSEC-DRC) had been sympathetic towards my research on the Congolese army, but they were concerned about my safety. And this officer in particular was worried about my plans to conduct research in remote rural areas with ongoing military operations. Taking another sip of his beer, he sketched the heart of darkness scenarios I would— in his eyes— inevitably be facing. He seemed convinced that my status as a woman would make my descent into the ‘jungle out there’ even more dangerous. “If they try to rape you”, he explained in a way that I perceived as mansplaining, “tell them that you have AIDS”. Was that sound advice or not? I did not get much chance to make up my mind, for a next thought popped into his head. Lowering his voice, he whispered, “If you like, I can get you a handgun, before you go out there, that's the only way to stay safe.”

Looking back at this beer-drenched conversation, it is the starting point of the gradual erosion of my belief that those who we are socialized into seeing as ‘security experts’, notably professional (Western) military personnel, are actually knowledgeable about ‘the security situation’ in war-ridden eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Imagining myself carrying a handgun, and the situations in which I would use it, I quickly concluded it would expose me to immense danger, not least as I was utterly incapable of handling such a device. Moreover, it would elicit potentially lethal reactions by provoking exchanges of fire, not to speak of the risks of being arrested and thrown out of the country on accusations of being a mercenary or spy. The more I reflected on this— unsolicited— advice, the more outrageous it seemed. But he had not been joking. He had been deadly serious. Perhaps his reasoning reflected his own sense of security as a trained military professional, feeling insecure without a firearm. But he also seemed to be reading the eastern DRC's security dynamics through a predefined grid of a ‘war zone’ that appeared strongly shaped by his experiences in Afghanistan.