At 5 AM is when Ancille Mukayiranga’s day begin. Her mornings tend to be intense but she always has a great day to look forward to. She hurriedly readies herself first, makes breakfast, usually porridge and bread, for her two children, and prepares her older son for school. She then puts her seven-month-old in the back and heads to work.
She walks for one hour from her two-bedroom house in one of Nyabisindu’s slums, Gasabo in Kigali, to her workplace. She lays her child in a children’s room and lets a nanny look after her. She then starts her job at 6 AM. Her routine begins like this every morning and ends at 2 PM, for the last 9 years.
The repetition has never made Mukayiranga feel bored or long for anything more. She is a baker. A job is predominantly done by men. Her job is to take the bread dough from the mixing machine and divide it into identical parts on a tray. The other women who bake with her shape the parted dough, graze it and line the parts into the oven. They all work in unison to make up to 1,000 breads per day.
Mukayiranga is just one bolt in an ever-moving, well-oiled, breadmaking machine called the Women’s Bakery. If you taste their bread, you will feel the smiles, the fun conversations, the courage, and the loving hearts the women bake the bread with.
“If you taste their bread, you will feel the smiles, the fun conversations, the courage, and the loving hearts the women bake it with.”
“I cannot see myself doing any other job. This is beyond making bread for me. I lose myself in this dough. I no longer even think about it. Making bread has become a source of living, a conversation starter, I even serve this same bread to my child every morning,” Mukazayire says as she tilts her face downward where small pieces of dough are aligned perfectly on a tray.
Mukayiranga is one of a dozen women who make a living out of bread making at the Women’s Bakery shop located in Remera’s buzzing commercial center known as “Kwa Jules”. You will recognize the shop, which doubles as a bakery and a coffee shop, by a poster of a woman in a Rwandan traditional dancing pose and “The Women’s Bakery” written in big black letters.
At the Women’s Bakery, women are the bakers, coffee makers, and managers. It is an all-women business and social enterprise.
“At the Women’s Bakery, women are the bakers, coffee makers, and managers. It is an all-women business and social enterprise.”
The story of the Women’s Bakery began in 2012 when the founder and current CEO, Markey Culver, was serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Rwanda. In her neighborhood, she noticed how malnutrition and stunting were affecting the lives of children. Culver believed women’s social and economic empowerment could be achieved through education and financial freedom. She then began teaching women in her village to read and write Kinywarwanda and bake bread over open fire using charcoal and firewood.
In just a few months, the transformation was apparent. The women could read, write, and bake. Their children were healthier from eating the bread. Culver decided to launch this as a business and social enterprise with ancillary benefits of nutrient-fortified breads sourced from local farmers which would thus propagate their community’s economy.
In July 2013, the Women’s Bakery was started. Eleven years later, it has opened three branches across the country, and the fourth is underway. The bakery has run multiple projects including a school-feeding project where they partner with schools and deliver fortified breads in primary and secondary schools.
A woman with raised standards
Women at the bakery have over the years been trained in both baking and financial literacy. Many of the women working at the bakery were street vendors and single unemployed mothers before joining the bakery.
The bakery employs 12 women and provides them with health insurance, a monthly salary, and transport fees. They also have a group savings.
Florence Mukakimonyo, 49, was a street vendor, and single mother before she joined in 2018. Mukakimonyo says she doesn’t remember any happy moments before she joined the Women’s Bakery. She worked all the time and made barely enough money to buy food for her two children. Some pleasures in life such as romantic love, rest or just buying clothes for herself, were lost to her.
“It is not all rosy and shiny now but I am miles from where I was then. I am a single, happy, working woman. I provide for myself and my children. I pay for rent, school fees for my children, and even have savings; something I would never have thought would happen,” Nyirakimonyo narrates as she chuckles at other women surrounding the dough-mixing machine.
Nyirakimonyo’s husband died when she was a young mother. She has remained single for almost two decades. I asked her if she ever wanted to get married again. She answered that she would only marry a man who has a university degree and a house and that she would not settle for less. She added that even though she only has primary education, she makes money and provides for herself and that raises the standards she seeks in a man.
High standards, confidence in their abilities, and improved self-esteem are all signs of an empowered woman. Francoise Umutoniwase, a Development and Communications Manager at the Women’s Bakery, told SENS that she can confidently say the women bakers have changed; they got more confident, more creative, and much better at making good bread over the years.
Like many Rwandans, the women at the Women’s Bakery have been heavily affected by food inflation and economic fluctuations in recent years. They struggle with paying rent and school fees whose prices have doubled in the last three years. Although their income has increased significantly in the past six years, the quality of their lives has stagnated following the COVID-19 pandemic and the financial chaos that followed.
Despite this, the women bakers can navigate challenges together with a community, and a support system that provides a sense of belonging and accomplishment.
