Achom holds the crown

By Harry Sagara A brief chat with the askari at this gate in Kololo ushered me right into the proximity of this domineering figure of a lady. Clad in a camouflage suit that exposed a pair of well sculptured legs, Lilian Achom is still cute and sweet. She might have been a bit less polished than she was on the catwalk some four years ago, but I’m inclined to objectively state that she still has the charm, yes, lots of it. Lilian Achom is one lady who not only beat tens of other contestants to win the coveted Miss Uganda beauty crown in 1997 but also held onto it for four years. She held on this crown so tight that it has taken the combined financial might of MTN Uganda, Sudhir Ruparelia, Joytsina Ruparelia and Uganda Breweries to drag that weightless crown off her head! She is slated to hand over her beauty crown this Saturday at what is billed to be a colorful ceremony at Speke Resort Munyonyo. Achom is still the same shy girl. She even feels flattered at being referred to as the longest serving beauty queen. Holding onto the crown wasn’t of her making, it so happened that the organizers of the annual Miss Uganda, Promoz Ltd either ran out of cash or lost interest in organizing such events. This meant that the reigning beauty queen would hold onto the crown until someone substantial came up to organise another pageant. For starters, Achom was only a student who never dreamed of anything else apart from a marriage to her books at Makerere University. “I had never even thought about contesting for a beauty crown. It’s my roommates in Box who convinced me to stand for Miss Makerere, this was 1996,” she says Achom adds that taking both the second runner-up and Miss Amity slot in that contest opened her eyes to greater things. She now had the zeal to contest for the big one—Miss Uganda, in 1997 though she admits that her venturing into the contest was just a test-run to see how far she could go. To her surprise, she emerged winner. That evening she drove home in a gleaming blue Hyundai Accent with the customized number plate, MISS UGANDA. “At first my parents were against the whole idea of me being a beauty queen. They were scared that I might abandon my books and venture into show business, which wasn’ t the case,” Later that year, Achom was escorted to Entebbe Airport by Robert Kabushenga, then a stake holder in Promoz ltd on her way to the Miss World pageant in Seychelles, she claims to have lost hope of achieveving anything at this global pageant right from the airport. “I was going alone, this waned my hopes since there was no one going to boost my morale,” she says before wearing a straight face “Honestly speaking, I went to Seychelles with an idea of having fun, travelling and maybe meeting friends but I never even thought about the Miss World Crown coming to Uganda,” Now a Masters student at the prestigious Sorbonne University in Paris, France, Achom says that being Miss Uganda for all these years got her to do certain things that she didn’t think she could do. Ends