Before going to Kenya, leaders in Bukedi Diocese which had recommended me, once again suspected me for being a spy for the rebel National Resistance Army (NRA) led by Yoweri Museveni. This was based on the fact that I was neither a Mugwere, a Munyoli, a Mudama nor a Musamya. A diocesan tribunal was assigned to investigate me. I feared and wanted to run back home.
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On 12th March 1961, a baby boy was born to his parents at Namutya village, Busaana sub-county Kayunga district. Unknown to society including his parents, the birth of this boy of the little known Kuku ethnicity of the Uganda-South Sudan border, marked the beginning of the life of God’s servant who would transform the destiny of many youths, the destitute, orphans, sex workers and other people leading an otherwise hopeless life.
The newly born was none other than today’s Rev. Can. Capt. Titus Braka, who was later in life to form a young men’s evangelism team composed of strong men including the current Archbishop of the Church of Uganda Dr. Stephen Kazimba Mugalu, Bishop of All Saints Cathedral, Frederick Jackson Baalwa, Can Samuel Wasswa currently based in the US, Patrick Kalenya, the late Katende and others.
Against all odds in the mainstream Anglican Church, but with patronage of the late Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, Dr. Livingstone Mpalanyi Nkoyooyo, the team of young men were disregarded and termed an offspring of the ‘Radical Balokole’.
His youthful attraction to vices including alcoholism, drug abuse including sniffing aviation fuel illegally obtained from Jinja’s Eagle Gaddaffi Garrison while still living with his maternal aunt, served as a blessing in disguise because on being bailed out of the satanic world, Baraka knew where to begin to find broken souls badly in need of mending.
Kyaggwe TV is beginning to run a series of articles depicting the life and services of Rev. Baraka who is retiring from mainstream church ministry next March, right from birth to the time he retires as the Executive Director of the Uganda chapter of the US-based Words of Hope Ministries International, a volunteer lead minister in the prisons services, the founder of a youth counselling and training concern known as ‘Manya Eddembe Lyo Mu Kristo’, among other services.
Married with seven children (five biological and two adopted), the history-rich priest narrated to us how he was recruited into priestly work against his will, preferring to remain an all-time evangelist, how he once spent a night in the sugar cane plantation after failing to walk back home due to poor health, and how he used to trek miles to and from his church and home to execute God’s work.
One of the most touching episodes in his story is when he miraculously survived death at the hands of the then Vice President of the ruling Uganda People’s Congress Paul Muwanga on suspicion that he was a spy planted in the church by then rebel leader Yoweri Museveni.
This is the first of the series of articles titled ‘Rev. Can. Capt. Titus Baraka – The Story of a Life’s Game Changing Minister’ as personally revealed to our reporters in a one-on-one interview at his Words Of Hope Ministries office located inside Uganda Christian University (UCU) main campus in Mukono Municipality.
(Photo by Henry Nsubuga)
REV. CAN. CAPT. TITUS BARAKA – THE STORY OF A LIFE’S GAME CHANGING MINISTER – Part I:
I have been a serving priest in Mukono Diocese since the 1990s. I started as a commissioned worker in the Church army training which I undertook at Bishop Usher Wilson Theological College in Mbale and at Carlile Church Army College in Nairobi, Kenya (hence the title ‘Captain’).
I trained to carry on evangelical work in hard conditions including slums, refugee camps, barracks, islands, prisons and in other such places.
My father, Baba Paul Lagu migrated from South Sudan at a very youthful age of about 16 years after losing his during one of the civil wars in the 1940s. His mother, my grandmother belonged to the Madi ethnic group while Dad was from the Kuku group, although we are mistakenly referred to as Kakwa mainly because of the location of our place on the Uganda-S. Sudan border.
I am now bent on clarifying this anomaly and even when I am departed, I want my grandchildren to know that the Kuku and Kakwa are two separate ethnic entities. My father left aged 16 after his parents had been killed.
He settled in Masindi where he found a famous revival movement evangelist called Dr. Lubuulwa, who convinced him into abandoning his alcoholic type of life and became an evangelist. My father later got married to Mama Rebekah Lagu and shifted further southwards to Namutya in the present day Kayunga district but it used to be Mukono district. It is at Namutya village in Busaana sub-county in Bugerere where I was born in 1961.
I began my education career at Namutya Primary School, Namusaale Primary School in Busaana, Kayunga, and later moved to Maggwa Primary School in Jinja where I was taken to stay with my maternal aunt. Life in Jinja became complicated because our tribe was marginalised by people who associated us with the deposed leader Idi Amin. I came to hate my tribe and school, and subsequently became a vagabond.
As a youth, I joined wayward youth groups and took to alcoholism and drug abuse. We used to easily access aviation fuel for sniffing from the reserves for military helicopters that used to land in neighbouring Gadaffi army barracks.
In 1980, I got saved but the transition was not a bed of roses because the vagabond type of life had been entrenched into my life. After stabilizing in three years, I rejoined school at St. Kalemba Senior School in Nazigo, for my ‘O’ level education. At that level, my dad said he had run out of money for school fees and wanted to sweat for the education of my six siblings. He advised me to marry.
I felt it was too early for me to marry but because of his insistence, I yielded. I started feeling the calling to serve burning in me, and Rev. Werometo, a Jopadhola friend, recruited me into a life ministry in Tororo. Little did I realise then, that this was the beginning of my life into priesthood which I desisted very much.
My heart was drawn away from priesthood because while in Busaana, a certain priest wrote a letter to the then Vice President Paulo Muwanga, known for his sworn hatred for people not subscribing to his UPC party. The priest alleged that we were assembling in church and mobilising youths and money for rebel leader Museveni.
Dad was jailed in Makindye for two months and it was sheer God’s luck that after two months, he was released after investigations exonerated him. Henceforth, I started hating priesthood and inwardly decided to remain an evangelist.
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So, grudgingly, I went to Budama to minister in the life ministry, and I learnt the local dialect. After a year in service. I was taken to Buwalasi for an interview to join the Church Army at Bishop Usher Wilson Theological College, where I spent two years. I then joined the Kenya-based Carlile Army College in Nairobi for further education in this direction.
From there, I used to visit the globally renowned slum of Kibera on Jogoo Road, where I had to part with some money, along with my college mates, to pay the prostitutes to grant us time to evangelize. They claimed that the pay was for the money they would miss out from their would -be customers.
Before going to Kenya, leaders in Bukedi Diocese which had recommended me, once again suspected me for being a spy for the rebel National Resistance Army (NRA) led by Yoweri Museveni. This was based on the fact that I was neither a Mugwere, a Munyoli, a Mudama nor a Musamya. A diocesan tribunal was assigned to investigate me. I feared and wanted to run back home.
But then Bishop Okile under whom I worked after the exit of Bishop Yonah Okoth, fished me out of Kidera and advised me to write to my home district diocese asking them to ascertain who I really was.
He volunteered to drive me back to Mukono and we went straight to Bishop Nkoyooyo who welcomed me in Luganda and when I told him that I did not speak the language, he asked which language I spoke. I innocently answered that I was fluent in Lukuku, Lukakwa, Ludama, English and Swahili.
And hearing that I spoke Swahili, Nkoyoyo was excited and ordered the Diocesan Secretary Can. Zadock Mwebesa to immediately recruit me for ministry among the sugar plantation community in present day Buikwe district.