RAUW Member Profiles
Sarah Mukandutiye
Chief Financial Officer, United Nations Development Program Rwanda
Foundation Treasurer, Rwanda Association of University Women
By Edward Guthmann
Ever since she graduated from Makerere University in Kampala, Sarah Mukandutiye has mounted an impressive career. After the genocide ended in 1994, she returned to Kigali, got a job with the Ministry of Rehabilitation and Social Integration, and helped Rwandese refugees to repatriate and find homes.
Today, Sarah is Chief Financial Officer for the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) and oversees the distribution of financial services to UNDP programs and to agencies that work with UNDP. She is also the Treasurer of the Rwanda Association of University Women (RAUW).
Hers is a stunning resume. And yet, Sarah claims, the wearing of two hats – wife/mother and career woman – is always difficult. “If I had a choice, I’d be a stay-at-home mother. I’ve always had a very busy job and sometimes when I work late I really feel like that other hat [the mother hat] is not really balanced.”
She believes in gender equality and the advancement of women, Sarah says, but the time she spent away from her son, 11, and daughter, 8, was painful. In 2001, she won a scholarship to the University of Manchester in England, and had to make the decision to leave the family for one year. It wasn’t her original choice, she says, but her boss and her husband of 12 years, David, persuaded her.
“I had never thought about going back to school,” she says. “When I told my husband he said, ‘Come to think about it, you need to develop your skills.’ And I said, ‘What about the baby?’ He said, ‘You’re not breast-feeding any more. I can take care of the baby.’ I thought, ‘Are these two people crazy, my boss and my husband?’
At first, Sarah doubted she would win the scholarship. “In my head, I was thinking, ‘I applied. Maybe I won’t even get it so I’ll have a perfect excuse to stay in Rwanda.”
Instead, she won the scholarship and spent the academic year of 2001-2002 in England.
For nine months, Sarah kept in touch with her son and daughter with regular phone calls, “so that at least they don’t forget my voice.’ At one point, her son went on holiday to visit her in England and stayed two months.
Sarah earned her Masters degree in development administration and management, and is applying her new skills to her work with UNDP. And yet, she says, the year abroad was “a nightmare. If there was something I could redo in my life, I would never leave my children.”
Sarah was born in Uganda in 1970, the first of four children. She was bright, ambitious and she had a mentor in Daniel, a cousin whose schooling was funded by Sarah’s father. “I had many things I wanted to be,” she says, “ranging from a pilot to a doctor. It changed day to day. I didn’t know that you have to focus.”
Growing up in a country with 500,000 Rwandan exiles, Sarah says, she never saw herself as separate. “I didn’t know I wasn’t Ugandan until I went to school and my name was different from my Ugandan friends. I went home one day and I was really very mad and asked my Dad, ‘Why do my friends call me names?’ You know, like I’m an alien or a refugee. I was in tears.”
At that point, Sarah’s father sat down and talked to her about the family history. “You’re different,” he said. “You were born here but your origins are from Rwanda.”
Twenty six years later, Sarah says she feels lucky to be part of a new generation of Rwandese women. “I know that in some African counties women are struggling because of imbalances. Some societies don’t seem to think that a woman’s place is in the office. But I must say that in Rwanda it’s different.”
“You know, like my husband doesn’t have a problem with me working. He’s perfectly OK. Also at work, I have never felt that I was discriminated against. In actual fact, I’ve been motivated by male counterparts, even to be what I am now…It gives you that motivation to go on.”
The circumstances in which Sarah became RAUW’s treasurer are noteworthy. She was friendly with Odette Mukase, and Coordinator of FAWE (Forum for African Women Educationalists) and a founding member of RAUW. “She rang me up and told me about RAUW and what they’re planning to do. She thought it was very interesting and she requested if I could be nominated as treasurer”.
“I told her, ‘Look, I haven’t even met these people’.” Sarah wasn’t even able to attend the first RAUW meeting, but Odette insisted on submitting her name. “I was very surprised when she called me to tell me that they elected me. That’s how I came to be the treasurer of RAUW. In absentia.”
Among the members of RAUW, she says, “We call ourselves lucky because we were able to achieve education.” So many women don’t have that privilege, “not because they were not intellectually capable, but because of the circumstances.”
“I love the fact that RAUW is now trying to solicit programs and funding to assist the most vulnerable girls to achieve their education. Because I know that that is the best gift you can ever give somebody.”
She believes that RAUW members can be mentors and role models to young girls, to inspire them through their own example.
In the next several years, Sarah says, “I would love to follow up and see what the girls become after their education. I would like to know how their lives have been affected and improved by other women, like us. I think they would be the best ambassadors to do the same for their young siblings.”
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