Phiona Mutesi began playing chess eight years ago
because she wanted the free meal the programme offered. Today she is a
world prodigy and was named a Woman Candidate Master, the bottom-ranking
title given by the World Chess Federation
By Amy Fallon, Kampala
Mutesi was a muddy nine-year-old foraging for something to eat in Uganda’s biggest slum, Katwe, when through her older brother she discovered a chess programme.
“We didn’t have food. We were sleeping on the streets because we didn’t have the money to rent a house. It was a hard time,” says Mutesi, 17, whose father died of AIDS when she was three. “The pieces looked attractive to me. I didn’t want to learn the game. That time I just wanted to get a cup of porridge.”
Mutesi was dirty and barefoot. The other children in the programme, run by Robert Katende of Sports Outreach Institute, a Christian mission, told her to leave.
“I didn’t feel bad because that’s the life in Katwe,” she says, speaking from the lounge in Katende’s house where she is currently staying. In the cabinet behind her, her trophies are piled high. “If you don’t fight you can’t get it.”
Mutesi returned again and again to the chess programme, but only for the free meal.
“That’s when I got to practice and I got better. Then I got an interest in chess,” she says. “I like chess because it involves planning. The life I’ve been living, it also involved planning. When you’re living in a slum you also have to plan ahead: how am I going to get food tomorrow?”
Chess in Uganda
Chess had been introduced in this East African nation in the early 1970s by a group of doctors working at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, according to Christopher Turyahabwe, general secretary of the Uganda Chess Federation.
“They thought it would bring back reasoning,” Turyahabwe says. “Later on it spread through the army to help them plan strategy.”
It was largely thanks to Father Damian Grimes, a former English principal who headed the progressive Namasagali College between 1967 and 2000, that the game was introduced into schools. Grimes started a Namasagali chess club, organizing tournaments with other schools.
“At first we only had two or three or four visiting schools,” Grimes says. “We could not persuade any girls to take part. Gradually, however, things developed and by the late 1970s and early 1980s it had gone up to something like 30 or more visiting teams including girls.”
A team consisted of four players and a school could send several teams to compete if they wanted. The competition became an annual chess festival, later named the Father Grimes Schools Tournament.
Little did Grimes know when it began that more than two decades on a girl from Katwe slum and her team would take the title five times in a row.
"Near heaven"
After winning her first Father Grimes Schools Tournament, Mutesi went to the 2009 International Children’s Chess Tournament in South Sudan. Her first time outside Uganda. Her first time on a plane.
“Wow, I was so excited and couldn’t believe it, until we reached [our destination],” she recalls. “I thought we are near heaven.”
Since then she has competed in two chess Olympiads in Siberia and Turkey. She was also named a Woman Candidate Master, the bottom-ranking title given by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, after last year’s event in Istanbul.
She recently spoke at the Women in the World summit in New York, attended by Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey.
In the United States, Mutesi also played her hero, grandmaster Garry Kasparov, one of the game’s greatest champions of the 20th century. Bill Gates has reportedly asked to play her and Disney is in the early stages of production of a movie on her life. One US school has even started a tournament in her name.
“I found out about the world. I found out about things going on in the world, that it was more than Katwe,” Mutesi says of the opportunities chess has given her. “I was only thinking how can I manage to get something to eat. But now I’ve got hope of becoming a grandmaster, a doctor, even building an orphanage for slum kids. I never believed I’d become an inspiration to other people.”
Before Mutesi began attending St. Mbuga Vocational Secondary School in Makindye, Kampala, on a full scholarship, there were only four female players. Now there are over 50 and chess is a compulsory subject at the school.
Source: IPS
By Amy Fallon, Kampala
Mutesi was a muddy nine-year-old foraging for something to eat in Uganda’s biggest slum, Katwe, when through her older brother she discovered a chess programme.
“We didn’t have food. We were sleeping on the streets because we didn’t have the money to rent a house. It was a hard time,” says Mutesi, 17, whose father died of AIDS when she was three. “The pieces looked attractive to me. I didn’t want to learn the game. That time I just wanted to get a cup of porridge.”
Mutesi was dirty and barefoot. The other children in the programme, run by Robert Katende of Sports Outreach Institute, a Christian mission, told her to leave.
“I didn’t feel bad because that’s the life in Katwe,” she says, speaking from the lounge in Katende’s house where she is currently staying. In the cabinet behind her, her trophies are piled high. “If you don’t fight you can’t get it.”
Mutesi returned again and again to the chess programme, but only for the free meal.
“That’s when I got to practice and I got better. Then I got an interest in chess,” she says. “I like chess because it involves planning. The life I’ve been living, it also involved planning. When you’re living in a slum you also have to plan ahead: how am I going to get food tomorrow?”
Chess in Uganda
Chess had been introduced in this East African nation in the early 1970s by a group of doctors working at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, according to Christopher Turyahabwe, general secretary of the Uganda Chess Federation.
Mutesi with recently won trophies
Photo: Amy Fallon/IPS
It was largely thanks to Father Damian Grimes, a former English principal who headed the progressive Namasagali College between 1967 and 2000, that the game was introduced into schools. Grimes started a Namasagali chess club, organizing tournaments with other schools.
“At first we only had two or three or four visiting schools,” Grimes says. “We could not persuade any girls to take part. Gradually, however, things developed and by the late 1970s and early 1980s it had gone up to something like 30 or more visiting teams including girls.”
A team consisted of four players and a school could send several teams to compete if they wanted. The competition became an annual chess festival, later named the Father Grimes Schools Tournament.
Little did Grimes know when it began that more than two decades on a girl from Katwe slum and her team would take the title five times in a row.
"Near heaven"
After winning her first Father Grimes Schools Tournament, Mutesi went to the 2009 International Children’s Chess Tournament in South Sudan. Her first time outside Uganda. Her first time on a plane.
“Wow, I was so excited and couldn’t believe it, until we reached [our destination],” she recalls. “I thought we are near heaven.”
Since then she has competed in two chess Olympiads in Siberia and Turkey. She was also named a Woman Candidate Master, the bottom-ranking title given by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, after last year’s event in Istanbul.
She recently spoke at the Women in the World summit in New York, attended by Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey.
In the United States, Mutesi also played her hero, grandmaster Garry Kasparov, one of the game’s greatest champions of the 20th century. Bill Gates has reportedly asked to play her and Disney is in the early stages of production of a movie on her life. One US school has even started a tournament in her name.
“I found out about the world. I found out about things going on in the world, that it was more than Katwe,” Mutesi says of the opportunities chess has given her. “I was only thinking how can I manage to get something to eat. But now I’ve got hope of becoming a grandmaster, a doctor, even building an orphanage for slum kids. I never believed I’d become an inspiration to other people.”
Before Mutesi began attending St. Mbuga Vocational Secondary School in Makindye, Kampala, on a full scholarship, there were only four female players. Now there are over 50 and chess is a compulsory subject at the school.
Source: IPS
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