Photo: Phoebe Biteete Rugumayo (middle) with visitors at her home in Fort Portal on January 23, 2018.

I feel under-qualified to write about Foibe Biteete Rugumayo, whose death on the morning of July 9, marked the earthly end of my teacher, mentor, and role model that I revered without reservation. 

When she was born to Dorotiya Babwereeba Kyekoreire and Benyamini Biteete of Omurwere just northwest of Kabaare on October 9, 1937, her parents named her Bategyereze.  The Biteetes, born again Christians during the two-year-old East African Revival Movement, likely chose this name as an exhortation to believers to await the reunion with the Lord. Bategyereze means “let them await……..” 

Little Bategyereze was baptized Foibe, a variation of Phebe or Phoebe, the name of the woman about whom the Apostle Paul wrote in his Letter to the Romans 16:1-2. “I commend to you Phebe, our sister, which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea: That ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you: for she hath been a succorer of many, and of myself also.”

Phoebe was a voluntary provider of help to Paul and many who were in need in her Church in Cenchrea and beyond. She was Paul’s sister in the Lord, a businesswoman of good financial means, with a caring, generous heart. Above all, she was a deacon (servant) who ministered to the church in her community. She was a leader in the nascent church, one whose role may have received limited mention in the Bible only because of the patriarchal mindset that relegated great women evangelists and church planters to mere footnotes. It was Phoebe who carried Paul’s great Letter to the Romans.

In the event, young Foibe Biteete was immersed in an environment rich with transformative teaching and fellowship that strengthened her embrace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She honored God, and honored her Biblical namesake, her parents and herself by living a Christian life. She was almost ten when she started primary one at Hornby High School near Kabaare. She graduated from primary six in 1952 and joined Kyebambe Girl’s School in 1953, and then Gayaza High School in 1956, from where she graduated in 1958. 

She went to Buloba Teacher Training College in 1959 and qualified as a teacher at the end of 1960. She joined the staff of Nalinya Lwantale Girls Primary School, Ndejje, in 1961, but her stay was brief because of an opportunity that was presented to her by the government of Chief Minister Benedicto Kiwanuka. 

Foibe successfully interviewed for a Kiwanuka Scholarship that enabled her entry into Wheaton College, Illinois in 1961. The Motto of Wheaton, a liberal arts college in suburban Chicago that was founded in 1860, was “For Christ & His Kingdom.”  Its mission was “to cultivate deep faith and intelligence in its students.” Among its well-known graduates were the Rev. Billy Graham, Mrs. Ruth Bell Graham, Phillip Yancey of the United States of America, and Mr. Zabuloni Kabaza of Uganda. Wheaton was tailor-made for Foebe.

When she arrived at Wheaton in December 1961, the winter was not the only trying challenge for the girl from the cold highlands of Kigyezi. Whereas her intention had been to read geography as her major subject, the only book about Africa available at Wheaton was “From Cape to Cairo” by Ewart Scott Grogan and Arthur H. Sharp. She made the necessary adjustments, read history and English, and graduated with a degree in 1965. 

Upon her return to Uganda, she was supposed to teach at Nyakasura School in Tooro.  However, Mr. Kabaza, the newly appointed headmaster of Kigezi High School, invited Foibe to become a senior mistress at his school which was starting a co-education program. It was my first encounter with her, and she made a very good impression on my junior school classmates and me. 

She had a very agreeable character, a dignified presence, with a gait, attire and speech that announced a lady of class and honour. She proclaimed the Christian faith and lived an exemplary life. Her brilliant mind and exacting standards demanded the best from us. Her good manners were necessarily contagious. Her English accent was a source of inspiration and subtle amusement, for she had transcended the English enunciation obstacles that repeatedly defeated many of us.   

Foibe became part of a group of teachers that set us on a path that opened the doors to the premier senior secondary schools of the day, among them Kigezi High School, Kigezi College, Butobere, Ntare School, Nyakasura School, and King’s College, Budo. Our Junior Secondary School graduating class of 1966 still recalls the experience with tenderness and gratitude towards those teachers.

Foibe taught at Kigezi High School until 1970. She became Deputy Headmistress of Kyebambe Girls Secondary School for one term, then took over as headmistress in 1971. It was during her tenure there that Edward Rugumayo, the Minister of Education, developed a friendship with her in 1972. Rugumayo, widowed in 1970, was interested in marriage. Foibe, almost 35, was ready for marriage.  However, Rugumayo fled from Uganda, quit his post in Idi Amin’s government and, together with his three young children, sought refuge in Zambia.

In an escape worthy of immortalizing in a movie, Foibe followed him there, and the two got married at the Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Lusaka on May 19, 1973. She adopted Rugumayo’s children as her own, and the happy couple was further blessed with a daughter, Mbabazi (meaning Grace). Another son joined the family in 1982. 

When my wife and I visited the Rugumayo home in Fort Portal on January 23 and 24, 2018, we were uplifted by her warmth, her wit, her sense of humour, her trademark grace and her composure. When I asked her how old she was, Foibe promptly replied: “I am as old as my little finger.” When I pressed her for a chronologic age, she answered: “I am now in the age of grace.” She had turned 80 three months earlier.

Covid-19 disrupted our plans for an extended visit. We looked forward to realizing that dream during our next visit to Uganda in 2026. Then the dreaded news came. Foibe was gone. Pancreatic cancer had ended the life of this wonderful woman. 

Her beloved husband and their children had stood with her to the very end. Her remains were interred at Kasisi Farm in Fort Portal, among her people, Abatooro, of whom she had become, and with whom she had created a bond of friendship with Abakiga of Kigyezi. 

Even in death, Foibe lived up to her baptismal name that she shared with its most famous owner. One of her last wishes was that all the “mabugo” money given to her family after her death should be donated to the Tooro Babies Home. Her husband fulfilled that wish last week, appending Foibe’s signature, so to speak, to the great book of those with unbounded generosity. 

We mourn with the Rugumayos and Biteetes.  We do so with confidence that Foibe is with the Lord. 

© Muniini K. Mulera