Obama’s charisma left me dumbstruck

Manuela Pacutho Mulondo’s participation in Obama Foundation Leaders Africa Summit is proof that worthy efforts bring corresponding recognition. Pacutho came to the limelight for starting The Cradle, a childcare centre designed to partner with mothers to raise their children, while allowing them to fully maximise their potential in the workplace.

“Through our work, more mothers are able to sit in boardrooms, in parliament, in cockpits. They serve in the army, in laboratories, in their businesses, and work long hard hours in hospitals during epidemics,” she explains.

In July, Pacutho was selected to attend the Obama Foundation Leaders Africa Summit in South Africa at the Africa Leadership Academy. Among the many participants from around the world, she was approached by the foundation’s executive to find out more about her work under The Cradle. She was told that her work on women empowerment and gender quality is something Barrack Obama, the former leader of United States of America (USA), is passionate about.

“At the end of the interview by the executive of the Obama Foundation, I was asked how I felt about introducing president Obama at the town hall where the leaders’ summit was taking place. I was ready and excited. For the next two days, I was writing the speech that I would read out to introduce the president,” an ecstatic Pacutho, wife of KFM radio presenter Brian Mulondo, recounts.

Before the summit, she got a chance to meet Obama for a one-on- one conversation.

The moment
“He was standing, hands in his pockets and as I approached him, he turned and extended his hand to greet me. Then he hugged and pecked me. We started talking and all the time, his eyes looked me straight into mine.

Whatever I had prepared to say to him, vanished for a moment. Later, when I managed to get my wits back, we talked about my work, the weather, children and the fellowship I was undertaking. He was not short on praises in regard to my efforts on women empowerment,” she recollects.
The meeting lasted about 20 minutes.

“Being an Obama Leader was possible for me because my mother sacrificed her dreams and so I dedicate my work to women like her, so other woman don’t have to make that choice,” she adds. In her welcoming remarks for Obama, she observed, “Today, we listen to a leader who was cradled in the dreams of his father, raised by his mother, and rose with the backing of community to take his place in history. He has taught us that no matter who you are, ‘you are the one we have been waiting for.”

The 32 year-old graduated with a Bachelor of Science with a bias in statistics and minoring in psychology from Makerere University.
She studied at Kings College Budo Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education, Our Lady of Good Counsel Gayaza Senior Secondary School for (Uganda Certificate of Education). She went to Kitante Primary School for primary school.

Most trying moments
Pacutho describes her childhood as the most trying time of her life. Her life changed in 1997 when her mother got involved in an accident, and consequently lost her job.

Her father who had been a warden at Makerere University’s Nsibirwa Hall also retired around that time, so the family had to vacate their university accommodation.

They relocated to Kamwokya, in a semi-finished house because that is all they could afford. Fortunately her father managed to get her a scholarship from Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) for her secondary school education.

At 16 years old, Pacutho started hawking juice on Kampala Road to help her mother feed her and her brothers.

Things got so bad that the family sought shelter at the back of a dairy shop that belonged to their aunt in Bukoto, Kampala where they lived. To get an income, they started selling off their own clothes.