While Phiona’s story of success has yet to win her the chess title of Grandmaster, she has gained another, unofficial reputation as the ultimate underdog. A grant that she has received through her competing has even allowed her to go back to school and develop her reading and writing skills. Since those early days, Phiona has represented her country in several international chess competitions in countries such as Sudan, Siberia, and Istanbul.Īlthough life for her is still hard – she still lives in the Katwe slum with her family – winning competitions and working hard to one day become a Grandmaster keeps her hopeful.
Eventually, she began to win against older children and compete for titles. So that’s when I decided for my brother to get a cup of porridge,” Mutesi told CNN.Īlthough she was unfamiliar with the game, as is most of Uganda, Phiona worked hard, practicing every day for a year. “I was living a hard life, where I was sleeping on the streets, and you couldn’t have anything to eat in the streets. This was the program that would come to change Phiona’s life and turn her into “The Queen of Katwe”. Of his program, Katende has said that he had started it hoping to teach analytic and problem-solving skills that the children could apply to succeed in their own lives. The slum where Phiona lives is called Katwe, and it is located right in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, where veteran and refugee Robert Katende began a chess program for children, giving them food in return for completing a lesson. This was exactly the situation that teenager Phiona Mutesi found herself in when she started learning chess. There is little food to split between you and your family and you are a minority in your age group because you have regularly attended school before.
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