He was born at Nkazibaku village, Ssingo County in the present day Mityana District in around 1850.

Noé (Noa) Mawaggali was one of the three Catholic martyrs of Mityana, Uganda, the other two being Matthias Kalemba and Luke Banabakintu.

He was an expert and appointed potter to the county chief who greatly admired his work. After living for a time in the chief’s household, Mawaggali built a house on the land of Matthias Kalemba. Houses of those days were small huts.

Kalemba was his friend, and it was this friendship, as well as the zeal and Christian example of Matthias, which drew Mawaggali to him and which induced him to join the Catholic catechumenate.

On November 1, the Feast of All Saints, 1885 when Noa Mawaggali was baptised in a group of twenty-two.

After the death of his father, Mawaggali took his ageing mother and his young sister to live with him and provided for them. His mother Meeme was later baptized, taking the name Valeria. His sister Munaku, about eighteen years his junior, suffered cruelly and heroically in the persecution and was later, after her freedom had been purchased by the missionaries, baptized Maria Mathilda.

She lived to the age of seventy-six, devoted to prayer and good works, and is the source of much of the information about her brother.

Mawaggali walked 128km every week because of Christianity
The Mityana Christian group, Luke Banabakintu and Noa Mawaggali in particular, used to walk from Mityana to Nalukolongo every week, a distance of 42 miles or 64 kilometers, for Sunday masses and Sunday sermons. Either Baanabakintu or Mawaggali had to set off on this tedious and difficult journey on Friday and spend the night at Nswanjere. He would arrive at Kampala (Mmengo) on Saturday evening, spending the night at Mulumba’s official residence near the palace. He had to attend the Sunday Mass and endeavour to commit the sermon to memory and then after Mass he would start off for Mityana spending the night at the Nswanjere Christian station where he had spent the night on his way to Mmengo.

The journey was not easy, the traveler had to go through thick and extensive forests and jungles to cross River Mayanja twice, wade through deep, and strong and wide currents in some places. That was not all, he would on a number of occasions encounter wild animals, highway robbers, dangerous snakes etc.

Noa saves others Christians for him to die alone
After King Mwanga had condemned Christians to death, and many of them had been arrested at Munyonyo, various raiding groups were sent all other Christian centres to seize all followers of Christ they find there. Mawaggali was at Mityana Christian centre where Mathias Mulumba had left him with their catechumens.

It was still early in the morning and Noa Mawaggali was inside Baanabakintu’s house, giving final instruction to the two catechumens who were going to the capital and discussing with them the news of the arrest of Matthias and Luke. Suddenly, the raiding party under Mbugano closed in on the house, shouting as they did so that they were looking for Christians.

Noa, walking-stick in hand, came out from the house to meet the raiders, saying, ‘Here we are!’ and, incidentally, giving his companions an opportunity, of which they availed themselves, to escape through the back of the house.

Noa accepts death for Christianity
“Is that you, Mawaggali?” called out one of the raiders.
“Yes, am the one,” replied the potter, at the same time drawing over his head the bark-cloth he was wearing, so that he might not see the death-stroke that he was expecting. It came from the spear of Kamanyi, the chief’s drummer, acting as legate, who well knew Mawaggali to be one of the leading Christians.

Levelling his spear, Kamanyi plunged it into the martyr’s back, and Noa fell to the ground grievously wounded.

At this, one of Mbugano’s followers, attempting to outvie his companions in cruelty, proposed: “Now that this Christian can no longer defend himself, let us feed him to the dogs.”

This horrible suggestion was adopted. The wounded martyr was lashed to a fig tree, and the dogs of the village set upon him, further wounds being first inflicted upon his defenceless body so that the animals might become maddened by the scent of blood.

Wild dogs feasted on him

Throughout the day, until consciousness mercifully left him, he could feel the savage dogs leaping at him and tearing at his flesh, which they devoured before his eyes.

*Hyenas feast on the remains*
At nightfall, his mangled remains were untied from the fig tree and thrown on to the main road, to serve as a warning to other Christians, and to those with leanings towards that religion. By the following morning, hyenas had finished him up, leaving completely nothing.

His sister demanded to be murdered but it never happened
Munaku, Mawaggali’s sister would have become the only female Ugandan martyr but it failed. With her mother a captive and her brother dead, Munaku decided to give herself up. She emerged hastily from her place of concealment and ran after the murderers of her brother, crying out, ‘I am Mawaggali’s sister. You have killed my brother: Kill me too!’ The men, taken aback, looked at her in astonishment. “My brother has died for his religion,” insisted the girl, “I wish to die also. Plunge your spears into me!” “You are mad!’ answered the men, ignoring the girl’s plea and continuing on their way.

Munaku insists

Munaku refused to be put off. She followed the men to the square before the county headquarters, where she found some thirty Christians in bonds, including her own mother, Meeme, the widow and daughter of Matthias Kalemba, the boy, Arsenius or Anselm and a boy who lodged with this family.

Mbugano, the legate, seeing in this comely young girl of eighteen an unexpected windfall, decided to take her as part of his share of the spoils and had her tied up with the others.

During the evening, the boy who had been captured in the Mulumba’s house, and also Meeme, the mother of Noe and Munaku, managed to free themselves from their bonds and escape. When Mbugano and his captives finally left Mityana, their route led them past the spot where Noa Mawaggali’s body had been thrown, but hyenas had completed the work begun by the dogs.

Noa told his sister never to abandon Christ

On Sunday 30 May, 1886 when rumours of the outbreak of persecution were circulating in Mityana, Noa took his sister Naku aside after the instruction. When they were alone, he said, ‘Munaku, I see that you are a good girl; you keep the commandments of God; you are industrious and neat at your work and you pray well; but you have yet to learn what the priests made very clear to us on the eve of our baptism. To be a Christian implies a readiness to follow Our Lord to Calvary and even, if need be, to a painful death. As for myself, I am convinced that there is a life after death, and I am not afraid of losing this one; but what about you? Are you determined to remain loyal to the Faith?” This part of the Mawaggali story is recorded at Kiyinda Mityana Diocese as told by Naku years later.

“When we have been killed, never cease to be a good Christian and to love the Christians who will come after us,” Mawaggali emphasised to Munaku.

It was a Monday
Next morning, Monday 31 May, after saying their morning prayers, Munaku and Meems went to cultivate, and Noa went across the swamp to Kiwanga, about a mile away, to see the man who was to leave that morning for Kampala.

Munaku and Meeme were working in the bananary when they heard the approach of the raiders who had come from the capital to arrest all Christians and loot their property. They entered the house of Matthias not far from that of Noa, and seized his wife, Kikuvwa, his two children, Arsenius aged ten and Julia aged two or three, and a boy who only slept there.

When Meeme and Munaku heard them coming, they ran into the elephant-grass that surrounded the bananary and tried to hide. However, they overtook Meeme and arrested her.

Then they went on to the house of Luke Baanabakintu where Noa Mawaggali surrendered to them hence the execution.

Munaku remains faithful as promised Mawaggali
Munaku indeed kept the promise as she fought had to keep her virtue of chastity up to the age of 76 when she breathed her last.

Munaku suffers because of Christianity

Mbugano Mawaggali’s sister Munaku to his home in Kyaggwe County, where heavy stocks were fastened to both her feet. This was after she refused becoming his wife. For a full month he tried every means to bend her to his will. After a few days in the stocks, all the skin had gone from the girl’s ankles and raw wounds encircled her legs.

Mbugano’s other women, moved with pity, wished to pack the apertures of the stocks with soft fibres to lessen the friction, but their master would not allow it.

“Her feet will be cared for,” he said, “and even freed entirely, when she has come to her senses.”

He resorted also to daily beatings and threats to sell her to the Arab slave-traders but nothing he could do was able to break down her resistance.

Munaku freed in exchange for a gun and ammunition
Finally, baffled by Munaku’s constancy, Mbugano decided to cut his losses. Professing pity and admiration for his victim, he offered Pere Lourdel the chance to redeem her. The priest was delighted and a bargain was struck. That same night, July 1886, in exchange for a gun and some ammunition, Mbugano handed the girl over to the care of the mission.

Pere Lourdel decided that the heroic profession of faith made by this young catechumen merited her exemption from the customary four years’ period of probation before baptism. She was therefore given an intensive course of instruction and some weeks later, on 22 August, baptized and given the name Maria-Mathilda. She became a religious (Sister).

ST. NOA MAWAGGALI IS A PATRON OF THE POOR, OF THE TECHNICIANS AND THE ARTISTS.

St Noa Mawaggali Senior Secondary School celebrate their Patron Saint’s Day every 09th June. Arrangements for this year’s celebrations are in high gear.

Compiled by Trevor Solomon Baleke a former Catechist, member of St Noa Mawaggali SSS Mbikko Family and Deputy Resident District Commissioner of Namayingo District