The bible tells the story of Samson killing a lion and bringing out honey from the carcass. If that was the unbelievable, then this story may as well help clear the doubts that it may, indeed, have happened. Katwe, arguably the biggest slum in Uganda, has produced a world star prodigy in Phiona Mutesi. At the age of nine, Phiona was a just another child doing what the slums have children do to get a meal the honest way – scrounge for it. She went the way of missionary attraction to church not because she was bent in displaying affection for God but the attraction that a free meal of porridge had was irresistible.
She was dirty and went about bare-feet like any other child there but through the Sports Outreach Institute (a Christian mission) run by Robert Katende she was always able to go back there for a cup of porridge; and that was where she saw the game of chess for the first time. The institute hasd a chess programme which was run and exposed to the children that were under Robert’s christian tending. From there onwards the lull of porridge encouraged the love of chess.
How she then became so good is now history but the impact the young Ugandan lady has made has proven no easy track to follow. From being champs at local levels in Uganda, she graduated to being the youngest female member of the Ugandan female team that went to the 40th World Chess Olympiad in Istanbul, Turkey in August, 2012 where she, at least, claimed a scalp, defeating Fiji.
The star in her caught the attention of Russian world champion, Gary Kasparov, who agreed to a match with her. Gary arrived late and went straight to business. Teenage Phiona got up and welcomed him with a handshake before the match started. She had become the first Ugandan chess player to play a world champion. At the end of the match, Gary gave her a copy of his book, Kasparov vs Kasparov, which contained the world champion’s greatest matches and as well would reveal a health bunch of tips to Phiona. Kasparov was reported as remarking that; “It is quite impressive that a person who never had a professional chess lesson is such a solid player.”
From 2009 when Phiona represented Uganda in the children’s international chess competition in Juba, South Sudan, and won a gold medal, she had become established as a sports personality waiting to be celebrated.
For a girl who lost her her father to AIDS at the age of three and raised by a single mother with two other siblings in the suburb of Kampala, a lot was yet to happen and a lot had happened sending her towards fame and glory. By the second week of April, 2013, she had met the American legend, Oprah Winfrey and was in the United States where she was invited to speak at the Women in the World Summit in New York at which event the opportunity of a tete-a-tete with Hilary Clinton, the former US Secretary of State was cream.
