The Queen of Katwe's journey to becoming a chess champion

16 October 2016 - 02:00 By Tim Crothers

At the age of nine, Phiona Mutesi could neither read nor write and had dropped out of school. Then she met a missionary, Robert Katende, who offered to teach her the game of chess — a sport so foreign in Uganda that there is no word for it in her language. In just four years she became an international chess champion. The book on her life by Tim Crothers, ‘The Queen of Katwe’, has been made into a movie starring Lupita Nyong’o. In this extract from the book, Phiona starts on her chess journey. Gloria Nansubuga was four when Robert Katende selected her to become nine-year-old Phiona Mutesi's first chess tutor."Phiona," she responded, when Katende asked her name. But he couldn't hear her. Nobody could. She spoke at a whisper with her chin buried in her chest. Katende took a step closer. "Phiona," she said again, no louder.She was dirty. Her skirt was soaking wet. Her blouse torn. Her bare feet caked in mud. She stunk. She gradually eased her way onto the veranda, where many boys and a few girls were sitting on wooden benches or the floor, playing the strange game. She picked up a queen and caressed it with her fingers.Phiona had never felt anything like it. The other children in the chess project did not welcome the new kid. Brian wasn't quite sure how to handle his sister among them.story_article_left1Even Katende stood back strategically to see if the community would embrace her without his influence. Phiona ate her bowl of porridge alone. Everybody refused to sit near her because of her stench. They laughed at her. They told her to leave. "Look at the dirty girl," one said."You, girl, you go away. You're not worthy to be with us here. We can't be with such a dirty girl."Suddenly the quiet girl became more aggressive. Phiona walked over toward her primary tormentors with a bearing that she was ready to fight. The moment is what Katwe, in Kampala, had trained Phiona for; an animalistic awareness that each day is survival of the fittest, that retaliation is demanded, that even the most naturally timid creature must fight when her existence depends on it.Phiona could sense that this day was a benchmark in her young life, a line drawn in the dust, and she could not, would not, be turned away from the beautiful pieces."They abused me, but they didn't know who they were joking with because I also abused them," Phiona says. "I said so many bad words. I told them, 'Look at your nose. Look at your teeth. You are not so goodlooking, either.'" Phiona threatened some of the other children until Katende and Brian stepped in to break them up.Brian dragged his sister off the veranda and walked her back to their shack, where he told their mother about how Phiona had quarrelled with the other children and how much he hated to see his sister abused like that. "Our mother got angry with me and she even slapped me for my behaviour," Phiona says. "She told me never to go there again."On his way home that night, Robert Katende believed he had seen the last of Phiona Mutesi. "Because the day was so hard for her, for sure I did not expect to meet her again," Katende says. "When she came back the next day, I knew she had an enduring kind of spirit. I knew this girl had courage."She may have come back for the porridge, but she came. The following day Phiona cleverly waited for the moment when her mother left their home for church and then sprinted to the chess project. She had rinsed herself with water and dressed in clothes that she had freshly cleaned in the washbasin. Luckily for her, Brian was not at the veranda that day.Phiona was greeted by Katende, who scanned the room, seeking a candidate to help tutor the new girl. He knew that her mentor must be another female, because none of the boys would deign to teach a brand-new girl, but there was only one other girl at the project that day: a four-year-old who knew nothing more than some basics about how to move the pieces. Katende introduced nine-year-old Phiona to the tiny girl and then said to the younger one, "Gloria, teach her what you know."Gloria Nansubuga had been with the programme for only a short time, convinced to join at the insistence of her older brother, Benjamin, if for no other reason than to get a free meal.full_story_image_hleft1Initially, Gloria did not want to tutor Phiona, and Phiona did not want Gloria to tutor her."I'm teaching an old lady," Gloria would complain.Phiona was embarrassed by the age difference as well."I thought to myself, 'How could this tiny girl teach me anything?'" Phiona says. "Whenever Gloria taught me, I really felt as if she was putting me down. But as much as I was despising her, I enjoyed what she was doing, because I wanted to learn the game."Phiona eventually grew to feel comfortable around Gloria, who was the only girl in the project who seemed to accept her."Whenever I assigned her to Gloria, Phiona could feel peace and she knew she was going to learn," Katende says. "It became a driving force for Phiona that if this young girl is able to learn the game, then she can also learn."Phiona could not be as comfortable with me as sometimes she was with Gloria. With Gloria she could ask four or five times until she understood something. With me she would fear to ask me so many times one thing."story_article_right2Gloria showed Phiona the oddly shaped pieces and explained how each was regulated by different rules about how it could move. The pawns. The rooks. The bishops. The knights. The king. And finally the queen, the most powerful piece on the board. She told Phiona about the embwa and the munadiini, and about how the kabaka, the king, is never killed but simply arrested, although Gloria didn't totally understand yet how that translated to the game.Gloria told Phiona that the most important point in many chess games is when a pawn reaches the opponent's back row, how it is called "queening" and how at that moment a pawn miraculously transforms into a queen. How could Phiona have imagined at the time how these 32 pieces and 64 squares could queen her?What made Phiona come back day after day were the beautiful pieces that had attracted her in the first place. She desperately wanted to move these pieces just as the other children were moving them. She could see the excitement in their faces, but at first she was not feeling the same emotion.After several weeks under Gloria's tutelage, Phiona began to understand the basic strategy of the game. At one point, Phiona heard one of the other children tell her, "Ah, that was a great move." She felt happy and wanted to make more and more great moves, positive reinforcement being an unfamiliar but powerful incentive to a slum child."Phiona really grasped the game so easily," Gloria says. "Nothing disturbed her. When she started learning, she developed a very big interest in the game and she constantly continued to play and that's how she became better."As the two became friends, Gloria also mentored Phiona about her conduct outside of the game.Says Phiona: "One time when I got upset with Gloria, she told me, 'Phiona, don't abuse me. Coach Robert told us that the people who play chess are always good people. They are very well disciplined. They don't make trouble.' In a way Gloria was bringing out a very good lesson to me."After about two months of training with Gloria, Phiona had caught up to her four-year-old tutor. Gloria had nothing left to teach, and Katende knew it was time for Phiona to move on to the opposite side of the veranda, to start actually playing the game, and to do it at a level of competition that had caused many other girls to flee from the programme.It was time to start playing with the boys.sub_head_start BOOK GIVEAWAY sub_head_endWe are giving away five copies of The Queen of Katwe by Tim Crothers. To enter, post a note on Twitter with the hashtag #STBooks and tell us why you want to read the book. Competition closes on October 21. We will announce the winner on Twitter after a random draw on October 24. Ts and Cs apply. "The Queen of Katwe", by Tim Crothers, published by Little, Brown, R205..

There’s never been a more important time to support independent media.

From World War 1 to present-day cosmopolitan South Africa and beyond, the Sunday Times has been a pillar in covering the stories that matter to you.

For just R80 you can become a premium member (digital access) and support a publication that has played an important political and social role in South Africa for over a century of Sundays. You can cancel anytime.

Already subscribed? Sign in below.



Questions or problems? Email helpdesk@timeslive.co.za or call 0860 52 52 00.