MISS UGANDA 2013: WHY SHE LOST.

Illustration by Michael Mutyaba

You should have seen her.

Though she arrived late, she managed to keep her cool as the ushers looked around for a chair for her to sit.

In her yellow and blue beach dress, she pulled the plastic chair, wiped her eyebrows and sat, cross-legged as she watched the proceedings- upper lip sliding behind her lower teeth.

She didn’t make it to the podium, judges say she couldn’t cut it – not enough hips, not curved enough, tall enough, eloquent enough,educated enough.

Yeah. Her names?

She prefers to keep them, but we already know her anyway, she’s around us everyday.

She the cleaner at office who begs you to extend your feet so she can pass her wrag. She’s the woman in the neighbourhood who once carried your seven year old body. She’s the maid whose ground-nut meals you enjoyed when you were six. The same girl you saw wiping a toddler’s face in the supermarket corridor.

She’s the now-elderly woman back in the village whose sleep  you  always interrupted with your breastfeeding patterns, years back. You know her, she the lady at the photocopier who smiles and adds, “it’s okay you will bring the balance.”

You’ve seen her, the lady on the fish market stall who always asks about your siblings. The kinky haired girl in class who volunteers to hand in your coursework. I am talking about that young woman at the petrol station who often smiles when you pull over.

The old lady who always delivered the ice-cream at break time, yes, that ever smiling market vendor whose tomatoes always get finished – first! that’s the real Miss Uganda.

You won’t see her on today’s front-page, even the billboard at the junction might never feature her, she’s probably not on face book, but you can see her heart-maybe.

In a culture preoccupied with the external, real beauty like this often goes ignored.

And we understand, because God understands already, that a woman’s real beauty is the “hidden person of the heart” (1 Pet 3:4) ,and that’s neither determined in a mirror nor a swimsuit.

But in a “gentle and quiet spirit(1 Pet 3). Something tells me those are the exact reasons given for her loss.