Suubi’s long march to East Busoga Diocese

oseph Kaliyo was a patient man. He took time combing his hair like every strand was a royal treasure, tenderly grazing over his mop that was separated by a gleaming deeply receded hairline.

He would disembark from his bicycle at the slightest uprise and push the metallic horse where many a man battled their pedals.

But the man who was incomplete without his alias “Makanika” was not patient with his son Paul Hannington Suubi finding salvation in the Anglican Church.

On Sunday, the eve of Makanika’s third anniversary, Suubi will be consecrated as the Bishop of East Busoga Diocese.

Every Sunday during Suubi’s formative years, Makanika would push his bicycle toward St Theresa Catholic Church, his grandson Denis on the carrier with his small feet tied beneath the saddle. But before reaching the church, he would stop in front of St Stephen Church of Uganda gate and wait for Suubi.

“He always stood here in the morning and waited. He would whip and herd the young Suubi toward St Theresa,” Mr Joseph Waniba, a laity at St Stephen church since the 1980s, told these writers outside the church.

Suubi’s brother Emmanuel Barugahare nodded in affirmation as Morgan Yeka, another member of the church, took over in reliving the father-son Sunday ‘rituals’.

“He would sneak back to St Stephen where his mother Tapenesi was a choir member and warden,” Mr Yeka said.

The two churches straddle the foothills of the imposing Mwiri Hill from the Kakira Parish side. Their vast lands are separated by a footpath with St Theresa sitting on the higher swathes of the hill.

No love lost

Makanika won his first battle of faith when he wooed Tapenesi, a staunch Anglican from Wabulungu Village in Magamaga (then in Jinja) in Mayuge District.

The man from Kagando in Ntungamu District was a staunch Catholic and took to raising his six children with total devotion to the Cross. But he could not get Tapenesi to wear the rosary.

She stuck by her Anglican faith and Makanika appeared to have made peace with that. But his peace was shaken when his eldest son, Byarugaba, returned from his maternal grandmother in Magamaga where he had been taken at the age of three a different person.

Makanika tried to get back his son from the grannies but failed. He would return after primary education because he had to join Kakira Secondary School.

Byarugaba had changed his name to Suubi – from which he apparently sought hope – and had been baptised in the Anglican church.

Makanika was confronted by a bitter reality and he moved to straighten Suubi in what remains an endearing parenting in Kakira.

“If he was not in school, he would be at St Stephen church,” recalls Sarah Namatovu, who was speaking to this paper alongside her mother and the Makanikas’ first born, Ms Elizabeth ‘Tusabe’ Katushabe.

There was no love lost in the Catholic-Anglican divide in the family but Makanika, then a supervisor in the maintenance department in Kakira Sugar Ltd, activated another button that tested the faith.

In 1989, the couple set out to seal their matrimonial vows. Makanika won one over Tapenesi as she agreed to take the vows in St Theresa Catholic Church.

It was all smiles as a special song in her praise filled the reception that Saturday.

“Situuka, gwe Tapanesi, nyimba nyo, Owa Mothers…” it went, with Tapenesi smiling her fulfilment out.

“After the wedding, she went back to the Anglican church where her faith resides up to now,” says Tasabe.

Tapenesi is confined to a wheelchair after suffering a stroke. She also battles with diabetes. She could not make it to her lifelong St Stephen church last Sunday for her son’s Thanksgiving Mass.

Makanika would certainly have not stood at the gate to cross his son’s path this time round and probably joined in the Thanksgiving in the Anglican church but three years too later.

He passed on in November 2020.

“He who calls is faithful and will be because He has called me and I am convinced not because of my merits, but because of His grace,” Rev Canon Suubi said in his homily.

St Stephen had strengthened Suubi’s faith but it was in Magamaga that it was birthed. Suubi jumped straight into a van without mingling with the Anglican flock. He was off to Magamaga for another Thanksgiving.

As he drove out of the gate, his niece Sarah was walking downhill from St Theresa where she had attended a Mass.

The anointing

Rev Canon Suubi was born Paul Hannington Byarugaba in Kabyaza Division in Kakira in July 1965.

The second of six siblings, Suubi was taken in by his maternal grandmother to live in Magamaga and only returned to find four other siblings and his father a supervisor.

His peers recall that he was a good loner, as if running away from social ills. This wariness about the negative impact of the society remains ingrained with Suubi to-date.

He severally rejected overtures to seek office in the Church of Uganda, saying being a bishop, for instance, changed a person and opened them to corruption.

“I have seen some of my friends who have become bishops and got alienated from the people they are supposed to serve,” he said in Kakira.

“In most cases there is a lot of corruption in this office, which I don’t want to be part of,” added the man who started off as a licensed teacher in the same school he had completed his secondary education in.

In the 80s and 90s, the two churches would fill up for masses in Luganda and Swahili. But the proliferation of Pentecostal churches and apparent drop in social values has changed that.

The churches rarely fill up anymore. But last Sunday, parishioners turned for the 6am Thanksgiving wearing their support for Suubi on their sleeves.

They contributed generously to the man who has scaled the rungs of priesthood. And he beseeched them to pray for him. “I ask you to pray for me, we may be weak but in Him I am more than strong,” he said.

Suubi and his wife, Dr Stella Margaret Suubi, a lecturer at Busitema University, and their three children, will be uniting in a new servitude from their new abode in Bugiri District.

Like his sister Tusabe said, “Suubi participated in many church activities and this is his reward.”

Education, service

    After obtaining a diploma in education from Kakoba National Teachers College, he became a fulltime teacher, still in Kakira and served in the church as youth chairperson, a laity and choir member under Rev John Wandera, then the vicar.

    Along with Rev Yung Hezekiah, an old student and a teacher, Suubi was identified by Busoga Bishop Cyprian Bamwoze and sent to Bishop Tucker Theological College in Mukono for training. The two in 1990 obtained scholarship to study Bachelor’s degree in Education majoring in Divinity at the theological college that was then affiliated to Makerere University.

    After graduation in 1993, they were ordained in Busoga Diocese and employed fulltime in Kakira SS although Suubi took up further responsibility as the chaplain at Busoga College Mwiri.

     Ms Eva Namukwaya, who started teaching at Kakira SS together with Suubi in 1989, recalls that her former colleague wanted to go far in his vocation.

Treading patiently, “Suubi always wanted to go up,” says Ms Namukwaya.

    After several postings to public schools, Suubi appeared to have settled at Bizibwera SS in Luweero District until the Church of Ugandan increased the tunes of their overtures.

   “God had different opinion even when I was trying to run away from Him,” he said.