On October 22 William Garvelink, a longtime Falls Church resident, was sworn in as the Ambassador of the United States of America to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) during a small ceremony at the State Department. The DRC, formerly Zaire, is the third largest country in Africa and is currently fraught with civil unrest. It is a burgeoning democracy, struggling to build the foundations of a freely elected government, while thousands of Congolese refugees in the east are fleeing their country, emerging in neighboring Uganda, seeking solace from the fighting at home.
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