RAUW Member Profiles

Dinah Musindarwezo,
Projects Convener, Rwanda Association of University Women,
Projects Convener Federation of University Women of Africa,
Member Projects Committee, International Federation of University Women & Project Manager, Ageseke Promotion Project, Rwanda

By Edward Guthmann

When Dinah Musindarwezo heard that Shirley Randell was organizing a Rwandan chapter of the International Federation of University Women (IFUW), she knew she had to get involved.

It didn’t matter, to Dinah, that she had just been awarded a British Council scholarship and would be leaving Rwanda for two years to study in England. She knew that the newly organized Rwanda Association of University Women (RAUW) spoke directly to her own concerns, her hopes, her view of the changing role of women.

And so, during the two years that she studied at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex in England, she paid her dues for two years and kept active her RAUW membership. “I felt that I was going to miss out (otherwise), Dinah says. “It seemed so vibrant and exciting and I wanted to be part of it directly.”

While in England, Dinah continued to receive and send information on RAUW. “I was informed of what was happening, even though I wasn’t in the country.”

Munsindarwezo, 29, arrived for her interview in the Kiyovu district of Kigali, wearing a white suit with red stripes. She has a radiant smile, a frank and direct way of speaking and a fine command of English from her two years at IDS, where she received a Master’s degree in Gender and Development.

Dinah heads RAUW’s Projects Committee. “I write funding proposals for RAUW, I follow up projects’ implementation and I represent RAUW and Africa in general on the IFUW international projects committee and the projects committee of the Federation of University Women of Africa. I also attend RAUW council members’ meetings and give updates on projects.”

Born in Uganda, Dinah grew up in a Rwandan exile community in the town of Mityana, outside of Kampala. She went to boarding schools in Kampala for her secondary education, and in 2002 earned her undergraduate degree in development studies at Makerere University in Kampala.

“My father was a farmer,” she says. “He had cows, which were the major source of income from selling milk and ghee, and sometimes selling cows when we needed more money. He also had a retail shop. In earlier years he was a pastor.”

The family was large: “I had one sister and two brothers, but also half brothers and sisters and cousins who lived at home. So it was a full house always.” In 1994, soon after the end of the genocide, Dinah’s family moved back to their homeland, to Rwamagana in Rwanda’s Eastern province.

All her life, Dinah says, “My parents and my sister Odette valued education and encouraged me to study hard.” The opportunity to study in England was valuable, even if her initial reception and culture shock were upsetting.

“When I landed at Heathrow Airport (in London), I felt scared of the new environment, and to be honest I didn't know what to expect. I was first of all kept in the immigration for so long, many procedures including going to a medical unit and required to take a chest X-Ray, although I had already taken one in Rwanda just before I left.”

After picking up her luggage, “Somehow I thought that I would find someone from the British Council waiting for me. (I was accustomed to) the African luxury of always having people waiting for you at the airport. Anyways, it wasn't the case here.” It was late at night, so Dinah spent the night in an airport hotel. But first she had to hire a cab.

The driver was gruff and unfriendly. “I asked him to help me carry one side of my heavy bag into the car, and he said “You carry your bags, I am not going to hurt my back … As I lied down in my small hotel room, I started thinking of my experience in the past few hours in the UK, and I was ‘Wow, what a country I am going to spend a whole year in.’ I was judging the whole country on just one cab driver, which was of course wrong.”

Eventually, Dinah grew comfortable at the university. “The atmosphere was great, and the relationship between the instructors and students was great, so informal and relaxed. At first I found some behaviours so strange, like students eating in classrooms and relaxing their legs on tables. Instructors were relaxed, too. They spoke little and gave a lot of time to students to talk. Another thing I found interesting was the way students called the fellows (lecturers) by their first names and not “Sir,” “Madam,” “Mr,” “Mrs,” or “Miss” – the words I used when addressing a lecturer or instructor at Makerere University.

At IDS, Dinah studied with gender experts that she had heard of during her years at Makerere, “so an opportunity to come in direct contact with these people was like a dream come true.”

By interacting with fellow students, most of them from Europe and the United States, “I realized that gender inequality is not a problem only of Africa and Asia as I had thought before. I heard of women in the UK and other European countries who were being battered by their husbands, harassed at their work places and others who were denied any property at divorce times. I heard of cases where husbands expected their wives to do all the domestic work even when they also had public paying jobs. I realized that the issue of gender inequality is a global problem and needs global effort to address it.”

During her years in Sussex, Dinah attended a 10-day conference held by IFUW in Manchester, England. “I made a presentation with another Rwandan lady called Francoise, about the violence against women in post-genocide Rwanda. The presentation was a success, people liked it very much. They asked lots of questions about Rwanda. It was great -- sharing the experience with women from all over the world.”

The conference gave Dinah greater confidence, greater motivation to move in the direction she was already headed. “I learned and appreciated the heart of volunteering. They were many people young and very old, very committed to the work they did in their organizations without any pay. I admired this a lot, and ever since then I feel that I always want to use my time to do the work that will help others, even when I am not paid for it.

“For me, working to promote gender equality is more than a job. It is a personal interest and commitment. I am ready to do it under any circumstances, because I know it is badly needed.”

Today, Dinah heads the Ageseke Promotion Project, a handcrafts-making project initiated by the Mayor of Kigali City in partnership with the Imbuto Foundation (the First Lady’s NGO) and the Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency. “The goal of the project is to empower vulnerable women in Rwanda by supporting them to improve their livelihoods,” she says. Previously she worked with the Norwegian People’s Association as Advisor for Gender and Governance.

Dinah says her family is proud of her accomplishments, but “they are just like other parents in Rwanda and they take marriage to be the most important achievement in a girl’s life. I have felt the concern and I have tried to talk to them, that I will get married when the time comes.

“I only turned 29 in May, and I don’t feel so old. But when everyone I meet is asking me when I am getting married, I sometimes wonder, ‘Am I too old or what?’ But yes, by Rwandan standards I am actually very old not to be married.”

Perhaps it is the influence of the European and American women she met during her years in England, but Dinah says she is determined to marry for love and not for expediency. In Rwanda, she says, “the pressure for marriage for girls, and sometimes boys, starts immediately when one finishes undergraduate university. It does not matter so much whether you have met someone you love and are compatible with and want to spend your life with. Love is just a small ingredient in the marriage business.”

Although Rwanda has a good record on promoting gender equality, Dinah says, “the reality is different. Women still suffer a lot of discrimination. A few of Rwandan men may be gender sensitive but the majority I have met have a long way to go.

“A colleague in my office was boasting that he just got married. I asked him how he likes the marriage life and he said that he likes it a lot, because he wakes up and his wife has prepared him good breakfast, she chooses and prepares for him clothes to wear, she changes the bed sheets every two days. ‘You know, life too good!’ And I found myself wondering” ‘Is he talking about his wife or a maid?’ ”