People and Power: Brother Godfrey Lutaaya's joyous journey of belief and faith

If your job was taken from you this instant, would you be ready to adjust to the unknown or would you even be content with what you have accomplished? This is a question Brother Godfrey Lutaaya has faced and faces as he looks back on his long tenure at Mugwanya Preparatory School.

Brother Godfrey Lutaaya, the head teacher of Mugwanya Preparatory School, Kabojja, derives a lot of satisfaction from his thirty years as a Catholic brother, teacher, and two-time headmaster.

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He can now say, “I have told people that I wouldn’t mind even if I retire today…I know what I have left behind is long term and long lasting.” He says all his work life he has tried to strike a balance between ensuring the school performs very well academically without neglecting its performance as a national music, dance and drama champion.

Lutaaya firmly believes both sides of the curricular life of school must be met for the good of the ultimate product, the children who go through them. He says, “Look at the child as the brain, as the heart, as the hands and as the body….the cognitive, the affective and then the pschomotor domain. We can not have people who’re just mere brain…mere books…”

He argues that equally meeting all the needs of this child is what develops them into a fully rounded human being.

A religious Catholic Brother of Christian Instruction Fraternity since 1989, Brother Lutaaya fondly recalls his childhood as a time he discovered he had a singing and performing talent that has not left him all his life.

He attributes his good fortune to God who also saw to it that Brother Lutaaya got good Samaritans who financed his education when his parents were hard up and it was the same gift that opened the doors of the Catholic Church for him.

“One time our people at the village decided; one could say I’ll buy uniforms for him up to primary seven, another one will say I’ll be feeding him so it has helped me to believe that there are good human beings.”.

With his legacy bound to a school whose enrollment he increased from 730 in 2005 when he joined to over 1300 today, registered it as a three-time MDD national championship in 2013, 2015 and 2016, his achievements are far beyond the school's international links and revered image.

Brother Lutaaya's conviction to serve is entwined with his belief that human beings are created in the image of his God and he must serve them as he would serve his Creator.

Lutaaya passionately professes, “I believe there are no accidents in God but then I also believe that God works incarnationally. God works through people and through us, he doesn’t discriminate….but it’s about cooperating with him…some people call it luck but it’s those who don’t know what it is.”

A graduate of the Makerere University Music, Dance and Drama school where he shared the same classroom with the industry's celebrated actors like Mariam Ndagire, Member of Parliament Hon. Kato Lubwama, Irene Kulabako among others, Brother Lutaaya also studied Theology and Philosophy from St Thomas Acquinas Angelicum, Rome, Italy.

Brother Lutaaya has fervently shared his gift with children at not only in Mugwanya, but also Ggoli Girls Primary School, Mawokota, Uganda Matyrs High School, Mawokota, St Savio Junior School, Kisubi and Kisubi boys Primary School where he was also a headteacher in 2001.

He adds that, “Why should you say who am I to accomplish this? Rather say who am I not to accomplish this…you’re created in God's image and that’s great. God is omnipotent, He’s all powerful, there’s nothing impossible with God!”

To whom who was freely given to be in a position he is today, Brother Godfrey Lutaaya ends, “Freely give…and learn to help where we can”.