There is no greater honour than to serve one’s country- Murebwayire

Who is Murebwayire? I am a 35-year-old, wife, sister, police officer and coordinator at Isange One Stop Centre. When did you join the force and what was your motivation? I joined in 2001; I was motivated by the zeal to serve my country. I believe there is no greater honour than to serve one’s country, especially in uniform. I was inspired by the RPF forces that stopped the Genocide in 1994 and wanted to be a part of it. At that time, there were very few women in the armed forces. What were your first days in service like? It was pretty challenging being a female officer as the force was male dominated. Society’s perception about females in the police force was not very positive. Being single then, people used to tease me, “who can get married to a police woman?” The perception towards females doing police work was really negative then, but that attitude has changed. How about your training experience? In 2001, I trained as a basic recruit officer at Police Training School in Gishali; the exercise took 13 months. I was a young girl from the city so my first experience at the school was weird. The training, for me, was not very hard but it needed determination to continue and finish it because there were countless hardships -mainly psychological - that were meant to change our attitudes. After about 10 years of service, I again underwent another closely similar training programme called the Police Cadet Course to become a commissioned officer. This time the training was even harder but since I was a tested police officer, I underwent the training with less difficulty even when the course itself was much more complicated compared to what I had done years before. Which peace keeping missions or special services have you served in and what was your rank? I was lucky to be among the first Rwandan National Police Officers to go for a peacekeeping mission under the African Union Mission in Sudan -Darfur from 2005 to 2007. I was Sergeant. With the work experience I had acquired since my first police deployment as an aviation security staff at the Kigali International Airport, I competed and won the post of Air Operations Officer at the sector, a position I held for one year, and was then assigned to assisting the women in the camps. In the camps I was in charge of women and children protection with different stake holders including humanitarian agencies and NGOs. Any medals or citations you have been awarded? How did you get them? Yes, a couple of medals; I received a Presidential swearing-in medal for the 2003 term. A community policing medal for having participated in community policing programmes that led to crime reduction and awareness and also, peace keeping missions’ medal for having successfully completed a peace keeping mission. Did you stay in touch with family? How do you balance family responsibilities and your duties as a police officer? When it comes to being a woman in uniform, I believe it is complicated. I have strict obligations and duty deadlines at work that require more time and effort to achieve something. Then I have a very important obligation to look after the family at home. I definitely cannot run from any of these responsibilities. It takes a lot of commitment, hard work, personal discipline and above all, an understanding partner at home (if you are married like I am). Because as much as work is important, as a person, I still belong to a family and it is the first thing that you do not want to compromise. If I were to ruin my home, I would ruin my work as well. Being in agreement/understanding with my partner at home will boost my performance at work. Where did you travel while in the service? South Africa, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Austria, USA and Ethiopia. How did the experiences affect your life? My experiences totally changed my life. First of all it changed the way I viewed life before. Growing up, I watched women being solely submissive to men and I didn’t like. With my experiences I have come to realise that women in some parts of the world have been emancipated and are no longer just submissive to men. Women are very important in any part of development and growth of a society. As a police officer, I also played part in investigating cases of gender-based violence and assisting the victims of the crime. While on mission, did you encounter any gender based challenges or violence? Yes, like cases of female genital mutilation (FGM), violence against women by men, child rape, biased laws like unequal punishments for the same crime e.g. in cases of adultery, in one of the Sharia laws, women are punished more than men. Nevertheless we succeeded in finding required solutions.