Phiona Mutesi happened upon chess as a famished nine-year-old foraging for food in the sprawling and impoverished quarters of the Ugandan capital.
“I was very hungry,” said Mutesi, aged about 18.
Now a chess champion who competes internationally, her tale of triumph over adversity is being turned into a Hollywood film with Oscar-winning Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o tipped to play her mother.
Photo: AFP
“My dad had died, and after the age of three we started struggling to get food to eat, my mum was not working,” Mutesi told reporters. They lived on one meal a day.
She was forced to drop out of school at age six, when her mother could not pay the fees.
“You cannot just wake up and say ‘Today’: You have to plan first,” she said.
One day, Mutesi discovered a chess program held in a church in the Katwe districts in Kampala. Potential players were enticed with a free cup of porridge, and Mutesi began organizing her days around this.
“It was so interesting,” she said about her introduction to pawns, rooks, bishops, knights and kings in 2005. “[However,] I did not go there for chess; I went just to get a meal.”
As she returned week after week, the young girl developed a talent for chess, which was introduced in Uganda only in the 1970s by foreign doctors and was still seen as a game played by the rich.
PASSION
With time, her talent turned into a passion.
“I like chess because it involves planning,” Mutesi said. “If you do not plan, you will end up with your life so bad.”
The film, Queen of Katwe, is based on a book of the same name about Mutesi by US writer Tim Crothers. It is to be shot in Uganda and South Africa, directed by Mira Nair. Filming is to begin later this month.
Mutesi’s mentor, Sports Outreach Ministry coach Robert Katende, remembers her wearing “dirty, torn clothes” when he met her a decade ago.
“She was really desperate for survival,” said Katende, who is building a chess academy to accommodate 150 students outside Kampala.
Two years into the game, Mutesi became Uganda’s national women’s junior champion, defending her title the next year.
“Phiona Mutesi has flourished,” Uganda Chess Federation president Vianney Luggya told reporters. “She made history in the schools’ competition by becoming the first girl to compete in the boys’ category. It was certainly surprising.”
By the time she participated in her first international competition, Africa’s International Children’s Chess Tournament in South Sudan in 2009, Mutesi still had not read a book.
“It was really wonderful because it was my first time abroad,” she said. “It was my first time to sleep in a hotel. We came back with a trophy.”
Since then, Mutesi has competed in chess Olympiads in Siberia, in Turkey — after which she was given the Woman Candidate Master ranking by FIDE, the World Chess Federation — and in Norway last year.
The teenager, who has two more years of high school left, hopes to go to the next Olympiad in 2016 in Azerbaijan.
Overseas, Mutesi has also played against her hero, Russian former world champion and Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, and inspired school students in the US to start a tournament in her name.
‘INCREDIBLE IMPACT’
Back at home, her fame has had “an incredible impact,” Luggya said.
“The number of lady players participating in national chess championships has doubled,” he said, adding that each of the 26 schools set to compete in Uganda’s annual championships in April are to have girls and boys teams.
Uganda’s female players have also been spurred on by the success of Ivy Amoko, who became east Africa’s first FIDE master last year.
A recent week-long chess clinic, involving Mutesi, attracted more than 200 participants, most of them female, from Kampala slums and surrounding communities.
STAR POWER
British-Nigerian actor David Oyelowo — nominated for a Golden Globe Award for his portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr in last year’s drama Selma — is also set to star in Queen of Katwe.
Luggya hopes the film will “open doors” for all players in Uganda, saying: “I think Ugandans realize that it is a brain game that can enhance their potential in all other aspects of life.”
Though the nation now has east Africa’s only International Master, Elijah Emojong, and the region’s biggest number of titled players, Uganda still struggles with kit and trainers — normally volunteers — plus sponsorship for overseas titles.
While her goal is to rise to Grandmaster, she also hopes to become a pediatrician and open a home for children, especially girls facing the same predicament she overcame.
“Girls are always under-looked, even in chess,” Mutesi said. “I do not think there is any reason why a girl cannot beat a boy. It comes from believing in yourself.”
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