Celebrating a Generous Friend

Celebrating a Generous Friend

If I were to use a word to describe Rutazaana Doreen Mushabe Ruta, it would be generosity. She is generous with everything she has got. Material possessions, money, property, time, experience, networks, knowledge. If she has got it, she will spend it on someone. 

Ruta will not only spend on friends and family but on strangers too. If she sees a need and she can meet it, so be it.  Scripture says: “Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance”, this principle is alive and well for her. She has had both academic and career success.

It is no coincidence that Ruta has risen through the ranks at her career. She is hardworking, and motivated and has wonderful people skills.  She is great at managing relationships with both clients and staff. Again, it goes back to her generosity. If someone needs skills development, Ruta will advocate for them to get training. If someone is struggling, she will counsel, protect, comfort, find out what is going on. She is also very practical and is impatient with long-winded approaches when a faster and more efficient solution is available. 

Ruta is a wonderful mother, ever present, completely intentional and fiercely caring person. When she devises a plan, she will stick to it. She will work around her office schedule, think ahead regarding leave days to ensure that she spares time to support her children. She avails herself for Parent-Teacher conferences, concerts, class presentations, games, and much more. She is very aware of how each of her children are handling school and whoever is struggling. If anyone needs help that she is unable to provide, she will set out to identify a friend, a pastor, or a family member, that can fill in the gap. She will look for a book, a program, a workshop that will help. She ensures that she is on top of it. 

The luckiest people are those who manage, through proximity, luck, or God’s blessing, to find themselves within Ruta’s circle of favour.

Ruta will fight for you, cry for and with you, laugh with you, at you, and on your behalf. She is loyal, hardworking, and willing to be inconvenienced for another’s sake. I could even say that she will lie to get one out of trouble (but I will not say this). She will borrow to provide for you, stay awake after a long hard day, to care for you. I can tell story after story of these. 

Once, there was a mother whose premature baby fed on Ruta’s breast milk, week after week, until the baby was old enough for other alternatives. There are all the young people whose education she has paid for until they are able to find work and live independently. 

There is all of us that she has got up one morning and decided to go on a grocery shopping spree for. There are all the friends and relatives she has sought jobs for. She would ask for a resume, and when she has got your resume, she then searches online or in the papers for a job that one is well suited for. 

Meanwhile, as she searches online and through the newspapers, she traverses her search through her networks to anyone who may mention a possible opening. If one’s resume was not up to standard, she would be coaching and send examples of better written ones, or even point you to someone she knows that will help. 

Then, if you get invited for an interview, she will arrange her own panel of experts that include her tough friends and relatives, to ensure that you make the cut. Trust me, after this exercise, when one faces the actual panel for the interviews, it would be walk in the park. 

Even with a successful career, Ruta has and continues to find time to mentor others. Her favorite subjects are marriage, family, and parenting. She uses her social media presence to engage with thousands of people. She then uses some of her weekend time to pass on positive discussions at bridal and baby showers as well as speaking engagement at larger meetings.

Her home resembles those homes we grew up in, where there was always room for one more. So, if someone needs a place to stay, and she has some square meters to spare, and a mattress can fit, then there is a place for them. 

The Ruta stories that are personal to me are too many. I have no idea how much money she has given or lent me in all the time I have known her. Money, clothes, handbags, and jewelry too.  She has changed her own plans for my sake, let me borrow her car when I did not have my own, only for me to find out later that she really needed it at that time. 

A friend of mine likes to say: “It is not love until it is inconvenient”. I have inconvenienced Ruta enough to know that she loves me. And just when you think you are the biggest beneficiary of her generosity, you piece together another story that throws you off – someone else might be the biggest beneficiary. Ruta is a freak of nature. They do not come built like this often. The hope is that she has reproduced herself. That we shall see her in the children that she is so lovingly raising. That we shall feel her presence in the hundreds of people that she continues to touch daily through her work and life. And that all of us that know Ruta and have experienced her love and generosity will, in turn, touch millions.

 Written By:  Susanna Ndikuwera