The next big thing in the movie industry is ‘Queen of Katwe’. The film has already been screened before select audiences in North America and now awaits the big release. From the reviews by western media, this picture is award winning material.
It’s, however, amazing how the whole movie world is waiting for it in anticipation. Except Uganda.
‘Queen of Katwe’ is set in Uganda and about Uganda. And Ugandans are not keen about things Ugandan, unless it is Uganda Cranes, our football team. Kenyans might watch ‘Queen of Katwe’ because Lupita stars in it as mother of the Queen of Katwe.
Briefly, it is the story of Phiona Mutesi, the world chess sensation who just a few years ago was on the verge of starvation in her natural setting, the Kampala slum of Katwe.
This is a place where, to avoid death from hunger, she went to a training centre where kids would be given food if they attended chess lessons. The rest, as they say, is history. The good thing is that this is a true and epic story on sociological circumstances and family dynamics. Another Ugandan teenager, Madina Nalwanga, has played the Phiona role.
Kenyan tourism agencies
When ‘Queen of Katwe’ hits the market, it will be all over the net and people will click and get to know about Uganda, whichever way they will pronounce it.
Millions will want to know about Katwe and a hundred thousand or so might try to visit Uganda as a result. That is when they will run into a hundred and one obstacles. The absence of useful information for intending visitors, the lack of easy flight connections from the moneyed cities to Uganda, lack of affordable decent hotel space, name it.
The average man on the streets of Kampala has never heard of Phiona Mutesi, so I don’t see Uganda grabbing any significant capital from Phiona. But indirectly, we can count on Kenyan tourism agencies to market her. The Kenyans market Kilimanjaro to the chagrin of the Tanzanians the way the Rwandans market the mountain gorrillas to Ugandans’ consternation.
So, the Kenyans can sell packages in London and New York to take you to Katwe where Lupita raised Phiona. But wait a minute.
Do we put it past the Kenyans to take ‘our’ tourists to Kibera, Kawangware and such slums and claim that is Katwe
