Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo
20-05-1948 – 03-12-2025

Personal Life

Rev Eugenio Tomas Mbulo was Born in Pembe, Inhambane Province, Mozambique on 20 May 1948 (Pembe is an area within the Homoine district, Inhambane Province, Mozambique). Born in rural Mozambique during the colonial period when most black women had home births and in a family where no one knew how to read or write during that period, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo’s real date of birth is unknown. He was assigned a date of birth based on his height, stature and other physical qualities so that he could comply with Compulsory Military Service in Mozambique. The military recruiters who were going around Inhambane recruiting boys for Compulsory Military Service asked him for his age. When he replied that he didn’t know his age, they analyzed his physical appearance, particularly his height, and decided he had to be somewhere around eighteen years of age. They then asked him to pick a month and a day, when he hesitated they decided to write down May 20th. Because his military recruitment documents were the first ever official documents he had (he didn’t have a birth certificate and no official admission document was made when he was sent off to boarding school as a child), his certificate of proof of having complied with Compulsory Military Service became the official document that he used when he went to look for employment. It is also the details in his military certificate, including his assigned date of birth, that he used to get his first ever ID (Identity Document) and later his first ever passport.

Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo’s mother died while giving birth to him. He was  raised in a polygamous household. As a little boy, he often felt alone because all his brothers and sisters had mothers who prioritized their well being. His father, seeing that he was often isolated, decided to send him off to boarding school where he spent his childhood and teenage years. One of Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo’s greatest sources of sadness was not knowing what his mother looked like. It’s not just that she died while giving birth to him but there’s also no picture of her. She was born and lived during a period when there were no cameras or access to filming equipment in their village in Pembe.

His father’s name was Mduu Mbulo. Mr. Mduu was a traditional healer who was sought after by people in Inhambane province as well as other parts of Mozambique for solutions to their physical, emotional and spiritual problems. Mr. Mduu did not wake up one morning and decide out of the blue to become a traditional medicine man. In fact, it was not his profession of choice. Mr. Mduu told his son, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo, that he was repeatedly  summoned by his ancestors to the spiritual world but he resisted multiple times. An incident (which he didn’t reveal) sent him on his knees to his ancestors to bargain for help. Following the aforementioned, he agreed to serve as an intermediary between the living and their ancestors. Before he became a traditional healer, as a young man Mr. Mduu lived and worked in the plantations. He fled from the plantations following two incidents. In the first incident, a white supervisor was whipping him as he worked. When he retaliated by hitting his assailant back, the supervisor sounded the whistle to call for backup. Knowing that he would be punished for defending himself, he took a knife and slashed himself across the forehead. When the backup arrived, the supervisor tried to explain that Mduu had struck him but the latter, now bleeding heavily from his forehead, claimed that the supervisor had slashed him with a knife across the forehead. The supervisor denied it, saying that Mduu had cut himself but no one believed him. The incident was reported to the owner of the plantation and the supervisor was given a warning. Mduu was treated and his wound healed. A couple of months later, another white supervisor also began whipping him badly as he worked. Mduu, frustrated and angry, beat up his assailant. He thought about killing him but didn’t have the heart to go through with it. Knowing that once the supervisor reported the incident he would be tortured and killed for beating up a white man, he fled from the plantations immediately. Mr. Mduu was a polygamist with many wives, all of whom lived in different huts within the same compound. As he grew older, Mr. Mduu Mbulo gradually started losing his eyesight. As he lost his eyesight his other senses as well as his ability to communicate with his ancestors and others in the spiritual world became stronger. His son, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo, who at the time was working at the Eduardo Mondlane University, took him to clinics and hospitals to see several doctors but none of the specialists were able to reverse the process, causing Mr. Mduu to become completely blind. Mr. Mduu Mbulo’s date of birth is also unknown as he was born in the 1800s during the colonial period when local black people had little to no access to registry systems or hospitals. He was also born in a home where no one knew how to read or write and therefore his real date of birth is also unknown.

Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo was the loving and devoted father of Matilde Mbulo, an author. Matilde Mbulo describes her father as a present, loving and caring parent who was a protective force in her life, particularly when she was growing up. As a child he would drop her off at her grandparents and pick her up, he did all the school runs alone, bought her lots of pictorial Bible story books and told her lots of traditional stories from his village in Pembe, as she was growing up he would tell her to go to the library, he would take her to bookshops to buy novels, he took her to museums and other historical sites, told her about his father’s (grandpa Mduu Mbulo’s) adventures and he was a great listener. According to Matilde Mbulo, while she was growing up in foreign countries, her father, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo, who had left a well paying university job in Mozambique to study Theology at the invitation of the United Methodist Church, often had to supplement his student bursary from the church by doing part time jobs like Portuguese / English translations, working in tuckshop, cleaning, farming and other work to bring in an extra income for the family (as his scholarship from the Methodist Church wasn’t enough to cover all the costs). Despite his hectic schedule he always took time to drop by her boarding school to bring her personal hygiene supplies, pocket money and even sit and listen to her talk about the challenges she was facing.

During the civil war in Liberia, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo used his military expertise to protect his family and navigate treacherously dangerous territory even negotiating with the rebel soldiers, ultimately succeeding in taking his family across the boarder to the safety of Ivory Coast after a long period of being trapped in the civil war.

– Mr. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2003, a huge blow that cut his dreams and aspirations short.

Education

Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo attended Gbarnga School of Theology in Liberia (1987 to 1989) before his studies were interrupted by the first Liberian Civil war, he went on to  graduate from Trinity Theological Seminary in Legon, Ghana (1991 to 1992), St. Paul’s University in Limuru (1993 to 1995) and Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology / Africa International University (1997 to 1999).

Professional
– He was a prominent Clergyman in the United Methodist Church
– He was Director / Rector of Seminario Unido de Ricatla in Mozambique
– He was a Pastor United Methodist Church in Malhazine, Maputo
– Before he became a Pastor he worked as a technician at the Agronomy Faculty of the Eduardo Mondlane University and at Mozambique Railways (Caminhos de Ferro De Moçambique)

History
Prior to becoming a Pastor, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo worked as a technician at the Agronomy Faculty of the Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique’s oldest and largest public university, located in the capital, Maputo, and worked at Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique (Mozambique Railways).

During the aforementioned period, he travelled to many countries, including  Italy, mostly for professional reasons associated to the jobs that he had. Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo’s daughter, Matilde Mbulo, has fond memories of her early childhood of not only going to functions at her father’s workplace where she interacted with children of his colleagues but also in the early nineteen eighties of her father returning from Italy, Soviet Union and other European countries with gifts for everyone. He spoke a lot about his many trips abroad. He would say “I once went to a small town where I was the only black man and everyone was just staring at me like they’d seen something out of this world. They were shocked to see a black man but they were also courteous and welcoming.” On another occasion he said of his numerous trips abroad “I was walking around and  suddenly bumped into another black man, a west African, and he hugged me and started to cry because he said that he had been there for years and hadn’t bumped into a single black person during that period.

In 1987, Mr. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo received a scholarship from the United Methodist Church to study to become a pastor. As a result, he relocated with his family to Gbarnga in Bong county, Liberia where he began to pursue a diploma in Theology at the Gbarnga School of Theology (GST). While in Liberia, his daughter, Matilde Mbulo, joined second grade at William V.S. Tubman Gray United Methodist School.

In the nineteen eighties in Liberia, there were growing tribal tensions between different tribal groups that ultimately led to the outbreak of a civil war.

In 1989, a civil war unexpectedly and suddenly broke out in Liberia. There was widespread panic in Gbarnga, Bong county, where Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo and his family were staying and people began to flee in all directions.

His daughter, Matilde Mbulo, who was eight years old when the war began, remembers the first days of the civil war as being marked by panic and anxiety. According to Matilde Mbulo, she developed anxiety from childhood episodes of waking up suddenly in the middle of the night to the sound of heavy gunfire going on all around and staying awake for hours as the war raged on throughout the night. Her father would move around the house in the darkness with a flashlight, asking if everyone was okay, checking the windows and doors, it was a time of panic and uncertainty. The sound of blasts and gunfire could also be heard during the day as well as noise of people running.

There was widespread fear that the rebel soldiers would eventually invade the GST complex, going outside the house was out of the question. The house was really small (two small bedrooms separated by a tiny bathroom, a small kitchen and a small common area transformed into a living room), and so during the day everyone would sit in the living room just listening to the gunfire and other noise of chaos outside. Looking out the back windows, they could see that the usually busy Mandingo Market down the hill had become empty and deserted and some of the nearby buildings had been burnt down

Matilde Mbulo, who was in fourth grade when the civil war started, recalls one traumatic incident that marked the first days of the war, when her classmates father (who also attended the same Methodist Church within the GST complex) came knocking frantically on the door of their house asking to hide inside. He was being chased by rebel soldiers who wanted his pickup car. He had taken the keys of his card and fled. The rebel soldiers who were chasing him were firing gunshots as they searched for him . According to Matilde Mbulo, who was eight years old at the time, they refused to hide him in their house due to fear that if the soldiers found him there, it could cause trouble for the family, especially since they were foreigner nationals. She recalls watching in horror as her classmate’s father ran further down into the GST students dormitories as the gunshots from the rebels who were looking for him continued to be heard.

When the first Liberian  civil war started in 1989,  Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo was staying with his family in a tiny two bedroomed house within the GST / Gbarnga school of Theology residential complex. The aforementioned house overlooked the Mandingo market, which was on lower ground. Gunshots could be heard during the day as well as during the night causing widespread panic. Many of the faculty of the Gbarnga school of Theology fled to the United States while neighbours and others, particularly students,  who lived within GST and the surrounding areas initially fled to their hometowns within the country. But as the war raged on, their respective hometowns were also eventually affected.

Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo, now trapped with his family in their tiny house within the GST complex, without money and without knowing where to run to as they were foreign nationals, were rushed in a GST minibus to Suakoko area. To ensure their safety, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo sought help from Dr. Walter T. Gwenigale ( c. 1935 – April 22, 2022), who at the time was the Director of Phebe hospital in Suakoko, Liberia. Dr. Gwenigale allowed Rev. Mbulo to  move his family to the Chaplains house, which was empty at the time, located within the residential complex of Phebe Hospital. Understanding their delicate situation as foreign nationals trapped in a warzone during the brutal Liberian civil war that was caused by tribalism and tension between different tribes within the country, Dr. Gwenigale helped Rev. Eugenio Tomas and his family stay safe.

The residential complex of Phebe Hospital, where Rev. Eugenio and his family were staying is located in Suakoko, Liberia, and during the war was a strategic location that saw fighting and occupation by various rebel factions and government forces. Control of Phebe and the surrounding area of Gbarnga frequently changed hands, leading to looting and massacres.

While the house that the family stayed at in Phebe was bigger and more spacious than the one they’d previously lived in at GST in Gbarnga, they had to stay indoors for safety reasons.

Matilde Mbulo turned nine years of age in the heat of the war, indoors at home in Phebe residential area in Suakoko. On that day, her ninth birthday, she recalls looking outside the window of her bedroom and seeing a tiny airplane stationed in a hanger that was rusting away. On other days she would look out the same window and see armed rebel soldiers roaming around the Phebe residential complex, and often being in a permanent state of panic as one never knew when the next exchange of gunfire would begin as rebel factions fought each other for control of the Phebe hospital. Civilians such as Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo and his family as well as other foreign nationals and locals within the residential complex of Phebe hospital were often caught up in the cross fire between the warring factions.

Food was scarce during the war and they usually only had one meal per day. Matilde Mbulo recalls as a child, her father, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo, would go outside to scavenge for food. Whenever Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo left the house to look for food, his family worried about him because many people were being killed while out and about. Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo had encounters with rebel soldiers while out looking for food but they spared his life when he told them he was a pastor and a Mozambican. According to Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo, during the war, whenever he encountered soldiers and told them that he was a pastor from Mozambique, they would ask him to pray for them and then allow him to go.

Matilde Mbulo recalls one Sunday, as a child during the war, when her father, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo, decided to take the family to church at the Phebe Chapel. At the service, injured people from several parts of the country were giving moving testimonies about their experiences watching loved ones being killed as well as surviving rebel attacks. Towards the end of the service, they began to hear heavy gunfire. No one knew where the gunfire was coming from, everyone started running. Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo took his family home. What struck nine years old Matilde Mbulo as odd about that incident was the fact that her father, Rev Eugenio Tomas Mbulo, made the family brisk walk home as a unit as opposed to running like others were doing.

At home, Rev Eugenio Tomas Mbulo taught his family that whenever they heard gunshots they should lie down on the floor on their stomachs to reduce chances of being hit by bullets.

On another occasion during the war, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo took his family to the hospital to visit some of the injured people there and listen to their stories. One story that stuck with nine years old Matilde Mbulo was that of a boy who was the same age as herself who had lost both legs and his entire family after rebel soldiers invaded a place where many civilian families were hiding and indiscriminately opened fire on everyone, including children.

Because the family was trapped for long periods of time indoors during the war, from time to time, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo would allow his children to play outside in the backyard while keeping a close eye. There were brief periods of peace but they never lasted long before another conflict erupted.

After months of uncertainty, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo managed to pay for a car ride to take the family to the Ivory Coast border. The NPFL rebel soldiers that were controlling the border allowed Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo to go across the boarder with his family to the safety of Ivory coast. Once they had crossed the border from Liberia to Ivory Coast, standing by the roadside with their luggage, they were picked up by a Lutheran nun driving by and taken to a refugee facility in Danane in Ivory coast.

From there and with contributions from members of a church in Maan in Western Ivory Coast, Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo and his family were given residence at a house in the culturally rich highland city of Maan, with it’s amazing mountainous scenery. While in Maan, they received help and support from neighbours and members of a nearby church.

In 1990, the United Methodist Church gave Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo funding to finish his Theology degree at Trinity Theological Seminary in Legon, in Ghana. Rev. Eugenio and his family boarded a bus to Ghana where they settled in Mempeasem in East Legon. Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo pursued a degree in Theology at Trinity Theological Seminary in Legon, Ghana.

Matilde Mbulo, then eleven and twelve years old, attended fourth and fifth grade at Elican School in Mempeasem, East Legon, Ghana. The then Head Mistress and co founder of Elican School, Mrs. Jane Nyaku, became a motherly figure to Matilde, often counselling and encouraging her. Mr. Phanuel Nyaku tried to teach Matilde Mbulo to play piano although she never really learned the art.


Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo received a diploma in Theology from Trinity Theological Seminary in 1992.

In 1993, Rev Eugenio received another scholarship from the United Methodist Church to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Theology at St. Paul’s University in Limuru in Kenya. He flew his family to Kenya.

While in Limuru, his daughter Matilde Mbulo studied at Tigoni School in Kiambu district.

Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo completed his Bachelor’s degree in Theology from St. Paul’s University in 1995.

In 1997 he began a Masters degree in Theology at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology at Africa International University(AIU) in Kenya. He received his Masters degree in 1999 and moved his family back to Mozambique.

He served as Director and Rector of Seminario Unido de Ricatla and Pastor of United Methodist Church Malhazine in Maputo.

Rev. Eugenio Tomas Mbulo was diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease in 2003. He went to heaven became an angel on 03 December 2025.