A female cadet from Malawi stood out among graduating students in a joint commencement ceremony held for seven military academies in Taipei yesterday.
Mirriam Chinema, an exchange military cadet from the southeastern African country, has become the first foreign female military officer to graduate from the ROC Military Academy since it was founded in 1924 in China.
Chinema said that she has enjoyed history and the military since childhood and that this was the reason why she entered a school for noncommissioned officers in Malawi.
PHOTO: LU CHUN-WEI, TAIPEI TIMES
She said that there was no academy in her country to train military officers and that because of her fascination with Chinese history and culture, she decided to come to Taiwan under a military exchange program between Taiwan and Malawi.
Chinema is scheduled to leave Taiwan for home on Tuesday after completing her four-years of training and study at the ROC Military Academy.
She noted that Taiwan has more rigorous and systematic training than Malawi, noting that Malawi's military training is patterned on the British system, while Taiwan's is based on the US system.
Chinema, who couldn't read or speak Chinese when she first came to Taiwan, can now speak fluent Chinese and Taiwanese. She said that she has had a good time at the academy, enjoying such extracurricular activities as taekwondo.
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