Kiiza David Maclaren

“I took part in the first beauty pageant” Cecilia Ogwal (right) and Inset, poses with the organisers and other finalists for the beauty pageant in 1969. She says although the pageant was won by the finalist from Fort Portal, the media reported that she was the Miss Uganda and it has never been clarified since.   By Esther Oluka Lameck Ogwal, my husband, then my fiancé, used to tease me that he was going to marry the most beautiful girl in Uganda. I would laugh it off saying, “You cannot say I am the most beautiful girl in Uganda unless you weigh my beauty and that of other girls on a machine.”  But one day, he brought me the Argus newspaper that had an advertisement of the Brooke Bond Tea beauty queen pageant. Participants had to apply and be subjected to oral interviews. Ogwal told me this would be the ideal weighing machine for my beauty and encouraged me to take part in it. I had just completed my bachelor’s degree in Commerce at the East African Universi