From slum life to Disney film: Ugandan teen chess star 'the ultimate underdog...' Proof that dreams for young girls CAN come TRUE!!!
She grew up in one of the poorest spots on earth. She couldn't read or write. As a child, she scrounged for food each day for herself, her mother, and her brother. But a chance encounter with a chess coach turned her into a rising international chess star, the subject of a book -- and the protagonist in a future Disney movie.
Ugandan teenager Phiona Mutesi is "the ultimate underdog," her biographer says. Those who work with her believe she's 16. But since her birthday is unclear, she might still only be 15, they say. Her father died from AIDS when Phiona was around 3.
"I thought the life I was living, that everyone was living that life," the teenager told CNN, describing her childhood in Katwe, a slum in the Ugandan capital of Kampala.
Robert Katende, a missionary and refugee of Uganda's civil war, had started a chess program in Katwe. He offered a bowl of porridge to any child who would show up and learn. "It teaches you how to assess, how to make decisions, obstructive thinking, forecasts, endurance, problem solving, and looking at challenges as an opportunity in all cases -- and possibly not giving up," he told CNN. "The discipline, the patience ... anything to do with life, you can get it in that game."
Phiona did not become a top player overnight. But from the time she first showed up in 2005, her aptitude was clear. Her talent is "extraordinary," said Katende. Phiona liked chess, and started training and practicing regularly. "It took me like a year" to get very good, she said. She walked about four miles a day to practice -- and to get that precious food. Soon she found herself beating the older girls and boys in the program.
Phiona and her family faced pressure from some people in Uganda who insisted chess was a white man's game, or at least not something girls should be playing, according to her biographer, Tim Crothers. But in her slum, so few people even knew what chess was that they didn't give her a hard time, Phiona told CNN. Eventually, she became her country's champion -- and represented Uganda at international tournaments. In 2009, she traveled to Sudan. Then, in 2010, she boarded an airplane to Siberia.
Phiona is not one of the world's top chess players. But she is the first titled female Ugandan player. She has a fighter's instinct to reach the top level -- and to achieve much more."Chess gave me hope, whereby now I'm having a hope of becoming a doctor and ... a grand master," she said. A grant from a program called Sports Outreach has allowed her to go back to school. She's learning to read and write.Meanwhile, Phiona is becoming an inspiration to people all over the world.
"That she's from Africa makes her an underdog in the world. The fact that she's from Uganda makes her sort of an underdog in Africa, because it's one of the poorer countries in Africa. The fact that she's in Katwe makes her an underdog in Uganda because it's the most impoverished slum in the entire country. And then to be a girl in Katwe -- girls are not treated as equals to the boys," said Crothers.
"Every hurdle that the world can place in front of her it has placed in front of her." The extreme poverty and deprivation in Katwe is hard for many around the world to imagine. Crothers wrote that "human waste from downtown Kampala is dumped directly into the slum. There is no sanitation."
Phiona wakes at 5 a.m. every morning to "begin a two-hour trek through Katwe to fill a jug with drinkable water, walking through lowland that is often so severely flooded by Uganda's torrential rains that many residents sleep in hammocks near their ceilings to avoid drowning," he wrote.
In the country of 34 million people, about one-fourth live below the poverty line, according to the CIA World Factbook. About three-quarters of the men in Uganda are literate; only 58% of women are.
As her world travels take off, she's in for more and more culture shock. "I don't like New York because there's too much noise in it," the teenager said with a big smile. But while it may be somewhat overwhelming for her, Phiona's success at the game she loves is bringing joy to her family.
"Some of them cried. Years back we didn't have hope that ... one day it can happen," she said. "So they are very excited."
In the elections of 2012, an unprecedented number of women legislators were elected to office in the U.S. House and Senate. This shift in leadership offers a critical opportunity to engage legislators on key issues that impact the women and families who are served by YWCA's across the nation.
