Woman braves 16-hour drive to cheer, cook for Team Uganda
Clara Pedersen (in white T-shirt) serves a meal of chapatti, rice and beans to Team Uganda in Poland on Friday. PHOTO / courtesy
What you need to know:
Clara started her education from Kapteret Primary School in Kapchorwa where her mother had taken refuge since breaking up with her husband. When Clara turned 8, she shifted to Kampala where she joined Mivule Primary and Rev John Primary Schoo Kitintale. Between 2001 and 2004, she joined St Kizito SS Bugolobi for O-Level before going to Lakeside College Luzira for A-Level studies between 2005 and 2006. She would join Viborg Idraetshojskole in Denmark for tertiary education. She is married to Andy Jul Pedersen and they have one child.
At about midday yesterday, Team Uganda that had been housed in Mercure Hotel in the heart of the Polish coastal city Gydnia were treated to a heartwarming dance to music ‘from home’.
Amid the midday drizzle, coach Benjamin Njia, dressed in a cream hat, knee-long jacket over a truck suit, and black and white trainer shoes, led a six-member Team Uganda to dance to Very Nice Tumndo, a popular song among the Kalenjin community done by Kenyansongbird Rose Cheboi.
The Kalenjin ethnic group, to which the Sabiny from Sebei Sub-region belong; straddles across Kenya’s Rift Valley and Uganda’s Mt Elgon.
Clara Pedersen, a Ugandan married in Denmark, some 700km from the coastal town that hosted the Saturday Word Half Marathon event, was playing the music off her car, whose boot hand been flung open to have a better sound.
Such was the warmth brought by a young Ugandan who had braved the cold and rough 16-hour drive from Denmark to Poland to give the team support in all ways.
On Friday, she prepared posho, beans, rice, chapatti, meat, cabbage, eggplants and groundnut paste. She shared pictures of herself – dressed in a white t-shirt with bold Pepsi label on the chest – serving dinner in the star-studded room with global stars Joshua Cheptegei and Jacob Kiplimo partaking of the meal.
“It has been great cooking for my people. I left Denmark to come to Poland and support my home team. My GPS said I would take 11 hours, but it took me almost 16-and-half hours because of the many roadworks in Germany and Poland. It has been great hosting these kinsmen,” she said.
“Today (Sunday) I bought yellow flour and eggplants from here because the athletes did not carry maize flour. The team carried the beans from Uganda,” she added.
Born in November 1987 to veteran sports icon (RIP) Nicholas Onegi P’Minga and Agathar Kanifa Cherukut, Clara says it was her father who introduced her to the sports world.
“My father trained us from childhood to love sports. He bought sports clothes and equipment for all of us. I even became a sports prefect from primary to secondary school,” she said last evening.
It is no wonder that when she learnt last month that the Ugandan contingent would be in Poland, she dug into her pockets to plan the journey through northern Germany into Poland.
Once in Poland, she booked into a hotel apartment from where she would manage the kitchen activities and invited the team over. She had carried an equivalent of Shs5m although she did not exhaust the purse.
Njia thanked Clara for the support to the team and the food. “You are one of the reasons we have performed well. We have so much strength and morale because of your time and sacrifice for the team,” Njia said.
“Thank you for the food from Uganda. It helps us a lot to eat food like this away from home, we feel at home,” Kiplimo said.
At 4pm, she escorted the team of seven athletes, including Jacob Kiplimo, Abel Chebet, Doreen Chesang, Juliet Chekwel, Doreen Chemutai, Zenna Chebet, and Njia to board the KLM flight to Entebbe. Cheptegei, Stephen Kissa and Victor Kiplangatb used a different flight and arrived this morning.
The weekend gesture wasn’t in isolation. At the 2019 World Cross Country IAAF championships in Aarhus, Denmark, Clara hosted the team at her home.
Back at home in Kapchorwa, she wears many hats; activism, politics, social life and so on. Such is the energy and courage of an outspoken woman who on many Sebei social media platforms is loved and loathed in equal measure for‘dictating Sebei affairs from abroad’ and kicking up storms.
