RAUW Member Profiles

Marthe Ndayizigiye Bappock
Member, Rwanda Association of University Women,
Immediate Past President, Rotary Club of Kigali,
Internal Auditor, Project Management Unit, Global Fund Fighting Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria

By Edward Guthmann

In Kigali, Rwanda, where women were traditionally excluded from the arenas of business and government, Marthe Ndayizigiye Bappock is one of the happy pioneers in a new era of gender parity. Three years ago, she made history when she was elected the first woman president of Kigali chapter of the Rotary Club.

Bappock, 39, ended her tenure in June 2008 but for the previous year she supervised the club’s various charitable gifts and officiated at weekly meetings, including one held in the new, fortress-like United States Embassy in Kigali. During my recent visit to Kigali, I saw Marthe in action at a Rotary meeting: gracious and confident, she handled the meeting with dignity and aplomb and seemed completely at ease in what, until recently, was an all-male bastion. At the meeting, 80 percent of the members were men.

Later that week, I met with Marthe on a weekday afternoon at the home of the Secretary General of the Rwanda Association of University Women (RAUW) Shirley Randell. Sitting poolside in the back-yard garden, Marthe spoke about her childhood in Kigali; the university scholarship that took her to Germany for several years; the cruel impact of the 1994 genocide; the resilience of the Rwandan people following that tragedy, and the miraculous survival of her immediate family during the 100 days of genocide.

Dressed in a light-blue suit with a Rotary Club pin on her lapel, Marthe arrived 10 minutes early for our interview. She seemed shy as she apologized for her English skills, and was slightly amused by the occasion of the interview. Once or twice, the questions made her giggle. Marthe, I realized, has an innate modesty that runs counter to the idea of boasting about herself or revealing a lot of personal information.

When Marthe was elected Rotary Club president in 2005, two years ahead of the date she took office, the men in the club were open to having a woman leader. “My impression was that they were even excited to have a woman as president,” she says. “I was feeling like they were challenging me to see if I was capable to do the work and maintain the level of the club. But they supported me, too.”

During her tenure the Rotary Club started an adult literacy program and organized relief for victims of the two back-to-back earthquakes that occurred last February in Rwanda’s Western Province, on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo. “People lost houses, they lost all belongings,” Marthe says. “So I initiated an action to collect money and some material goods and first aid to help them.”

For the last three years, Marthe has been internal auditor for the Global Fund on AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. “I make sure the funds are used for the purpose they have been given to,” Marthe says, “and I make sure people respect procedures that were put in place.” The Global Fund is a national organization run 100 percent by Rwandan people, “but the funds are coming from abroad,” she said.

So far, the Global Fund’s efforts have seen measurable and encouraging results. “I remember when the Global Fund started in 2003, the AIDS infection rate in Rwanda was 13 percent. Now we are counting 5 percent. It’s a big, big improvement.”

During that time, AIDS medications, once impossibly expensive for most Africans, have also been made affordable. “At one time they cost $1,000 per month for one person. Now, people pay less than $10 per month for the whole family.”

Malaria, as well, is greatly reduced in Rwanda. “It’s not like it was, let’s say, five years ago. We used at have at University Hospital in Kigali 200 persons a week treated for malaria. Now, you have sometimes only five a week.”

Success on the malaria front is due in part to improved malaria medicine, Marthe says – “We are using a different combination which has proved to be better” – and also to the mosquito nets which the Global Fund and other organizations have donated to families.

Marthe was born in Kigali in 1969, the fourth of eight children. When she was finishing secondary school she heard about a university scholarship provided by a German institution. After taking part in a competitive examination she became one of seven Rwandan students – one girl, six boys -- to receive the scholarship. She spent one year in Saarbruck, Germany learning to speak German and then went to Cologne, Germany where she earned a Master’s degree in business management.

But instead of returning to Rwanda at the end of her studies, Marthe remained in Germany. “I got married and I had two children.” Her husband, Anselme, is from Yaounde, Cameroun and was living in Germany when she met him. Their sons are Loris, 12, and Stanley, 9.

In 1994, when Hutu militias murdered an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during a 100-day siege, Marthe was living in Germany. She was horrified and afraid. “I had no contact to anyone (in Rwanda),” she says, “and I was sure that all my family was killed. I had a big determination to know what happened.”

When she got the news that her family was safe, she says, “I was very happy. We are very blessed. But there was remaining a kind of sadness knowing that the next-door neighbor was dead and so many others. And then I was thinking, ‘People shall not suffer again.’ This is my ambition now. And every opportunity I have to say or to act, I’ll do so that people can perhaps learn something from the genocide.

“I have a lot of friends who are alone. One friend is a Tutsi and they killed everyone in her family. It’s not easy to deal with the reality. It’s part of the history of our country.”

There is grief in the wake of unspeakable chaos and cruelty, but for Marthe there is also hope and inspiration in the many ways Rwanda has recovered.

“I am proud of my country and of the people, what we have done here. We spend a lot of time working, improving this country. I think we have taken big, big steps. I think we are doing very well.

“Every morning, I look outside the window and say, ‘This country is beautiful. I’m lucky to live here.’ ”