ORI Board Member Josh Ruxin is occasionally given the opportunity to post on Nicholas Kristof's NY Times Blog. His post on his experience during genocide memorial week is very compelling, and it includes a moving story from the Orphans of Rwanda County Director, Jean Baptiste Ntakirutimana. His experience was something I'd refrained from sharing here, because I thought it would be inappropriate to blog about something so personal. But, since he seems to have given Mr. Ruxin permission to write about it, I'll share my impressions too.
Jean Baptiste (JB) recently went to a prison in southern Rwanda to meet the man who killed his mother. This trip occurred at the end of my first week at ORI, and JB asked all of us to say a prayer for him as he sought strength to go through with the visit. When I left work last Friday, I shook JB's hand, wished him luck, and told him that I would be thinking of him. He seemed emotionally fragile, but I was impressed by his composure. I didn't see him again until Tuesday, the day after I attended the memorial service. With the experience at Gisozi fresh in my mind, I was even more impressed by JB's willingness to confront his mother's killer, but I was also uncertain how to approach the subject with JB. He relates his experience in his own words in the email that Mr. Ruxin posted on the Times site, but before he sent that email around to us he had already stopped by my desk to thank me and Lauren for our support and to tell us how things went. JB described the feeling of relief that washed over him after he wept for his mother and he seemed to still be surprised that he, not his mother's killer, had been the greatest benefactor of his courageous act of forgiveness.
Here's the NY Times post.
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