By Jimmy Kraft Olot, journalist – former LC3 aspirant for Otwal Sub County.
Kololo, 8 March 2026.
When International Women’s Day parades spotlight UPDF units, I keep thinking of a different drill: a young mother balancing guest‑house keys, A‑level books and baptism rosters inside St Augustine Community Centre.
That center—now home to All Saints University (ASUL)—sat brick‑tight to the Lira Court of Adjudicature, a stone’s throw from Lira CPS and a short walk to City Hall and the District Council.
I passed it daily some years en route to school; behind its fence Bishop Melchizedek “Medi” Otim had installed Rebecca Amuge Otengo as warden, restaurant‑manager.
“She accounts for posho, funds, staff welfare and prayer with the same pen,” he told me. That pen has since signed peace‑meeting notes, parliamentary bills and, today, diplomatic cables from Addis Ababa.
Peace work before the title.
When LRA raids menaced Amugu and some places in Alebtong and parts of Otuke, Rebecca Otengo used the St Augustine compound to craft for voluntary 2005‑08 shuttles with radio man the late James Okabo aka DJ Kakaba, mediating small‑unit defections.
Former abductees I interviewed (2010) recall her arriving un‑escorted to Amugu church, maize flour in the boot. By 2006 she was Woman MP for Alebtong; colleagues Franco Ojul and Hon Daniel Omara Atubo joined her push that carved Otuke District, so a mother in Alangi no longer trekked 90 km for services.
Ministry, Motorbikes and Herders’ Logic.
As State Minister for Northern Uganda (2011‑16), Hon Rebecca Otengo shifted resources through church networks she knew from the St Augustine days. Field notes record Yamaha AG100s to Amuria parish priests, Korean‑made iron sheets to Zion and Pentecostal churches doubling as granaries, and 4,200 goats delivered via accountability sheets identical to those she’d used for guest‑house inventories: leakage under 8 percent, OPM reported.
Critics called it “sectarian,” farmers in Lango and the entire Northern Uganda called it “goats that arrived alive.” The same education‑table habit continued—mentorship circles everywhere, aid from the late Hon Imat Cecilia Babra Atim Ogwal, and scholarships that still pay fees for now‑councilors in Alebtong.
Ambassador Without Erasing the Warden.
Posted to Ethiopia in 2021, Hon Rebecca Otengo chairs IGAD talks on Karamoja‑Turkana trade—restocking logic turned cross‑border policy.
In Addis she hosts Friday meals for Ugandan nurses, a ritual staff trace to St Augustine’s restaurant.
When I called last week, she laughed: “Bishop Medi said feed people first.” The Centre’s fence‑line location—courthouse, police, civic halls—was her first corridor of power: law, security, local government. She navigated them before she had a title, and still does, now with a diplomatic plate.
Why she fits the 2026’s Women’s Day.
Scaling up justice for women is not Hon Rebecca Otengo’s slogan, yet her path—book‑keeper and warden at a Lira‑city Centre, voluntary peace rider, councilor, Vice chairperson Lira District to MP who redrew maps, minister with motorbikes, ambassador—shows how institutional cracks widen when administrators insist ledgers include the excluded.
From a walled compound beside courts and council, to embassies and IGAD boardrooms, her rise reminds Lango—and Uganda—that peace‑to‑development work often starts where guest‑house receipts meet baptism records, and bishop hands full of blessings, both to a young mother who does not drop them.
