Priest giving spiritual support to his pupils

Raised in a humble family, Rev Bitungirwe, 46, is a primary school Social Studies and Religious Education teacher currently teaching at Rwatukwire Primary School in Bushenyi-Ishaka municipality.
He has been teaching for the last 18 years in different primary schools including St. Mary’s Kyamuhunga, Bweranyangi Junior School and Rwatukwire Primary School in western Uganda where he normally juggles classroom teaching and chaplaincy.
In his service as teacher and chaplain, Bitungirwe has been instrumental in providing emotional and spiritual support to the pupils thus helping them find a better way of dealing with life issues.

Rocky start
The first born of 10 children, Bitungirwe did not get a chance to attending school in the early years of his life. Instead, he grazed his grandfather’s cows until he was 11 years old. “My fellow children would tell me how I would suffer in future since I had not gone to school. Out of anger, I decided to join school without money,” Bitungirwe recounts.
And so in 1982 he joined Kyeitembe Model Primary School. “At home we had sweet potatoes, which I used to carry for my teacher, something that made us develop a close relationship. Basing on such, it was always hard for him to surrender me to the head teacher as a fees defaulter,” he narrates.
Luckily he completed Primary Seven in 1990 and joined St Kaggwa Bushenyi High School where he studied up to Senior Two and moved to Our Lady Consolanta SS in Kampala when his uncle offered to pay his school fees up to Senior Four. “I wanted to join Senior Five but had no fees thus I opted for college. I joined Bushenyi Primary Teachers College in 1996 and trained as a teacher of Social Studies and Religious Education,” the priest says.

Serving as teacher
Soon after completing college in 1999, Bitungirwe was granted a position to teach at Kibisho Primary School. But for a whole year, he was not put on the government payroll until 2000 while teaching at Kitakuuka Primary School, despite his efforts to woo authorities.
While at Kitakuuka, parents from Rukindo Primary School, a school in the same district (Bushenyi then), asked education authorities at the district to transfer Bitungirwe to Rukindo in 2001. He taught at the school for four years.
In 2006 he was transferred to St. Marys Primary School, Kyamuhunga where for a year, before God called him to study Theology.
“God called me to do fulltime ministry but the school authorities could not provide a favourable environment for me to study while working. So I was transferred to Rwatukwire Primary School and there, the administration allowed me to study Divinity while working,” he narrates.
In 2009, Bitungirwe enrolled for Bachelor of Divinity at Bishop Barham University College, Kabale until 2012 when he was ordained a priest and posted to Kashozi Boarding Primary School as chaplain.

The shepherd
At Kashozi, Bitungirwe worked hard to teach religious education, and nourish pupils spiritually by organising prayer services at the school.
Bitungirwe says he has not earned a lot of money from teaching and shepherding God’s sheep because to him, the two are services, not a source of wealth. “I am not looking for money in all this because I have not been working but serving humanity. My career has given me people and people are better than having huge sums of money,” he says.
Asked what he thinks is the key to making pupils excel, Bitungirwe says pupils do not need to be harassed to be able to master what they learn in class but love and support from teachers and parents. He advises that pupils, especially girls should be protected from bad teachers who want to defile them.
This is good advice especially coming from a man whose service starts from a family of six children.