Uganda is such a country full of innovative and go-getter people, so not relenting when it comes to achieving great success at all levels of society. You can definitely remember John Akii Bua, the hero who earned his country the very first gold medal at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Dr. John Ssentamu, the first Black Archbishop of Canterbury, John Okello, the civilian from Lira town in Northern Uganda that went on the Arab-ruled island of Zanzibar and led a revolution like no other on the African continent back in January 1964. The list is way endless if it comes to these great men and women proud to be bonafide family members of the UG-256 network.
Another that you may not know or might not have heard of for that matter anywhere before is none other than the first African-American Mission-Control Flight Director of NASA. It’s not a bluff ladies and gentlemen, he is Ugandan too.
Kwatsi Lindsey Alibaruho is only of 58 people to ever direct human spaceflight missions as of the November of 2005, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the official executive branch of the US government charged with the responsibility of the nation’s aeronautics research and civilian space maneuverers, with headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Born to Dr. George Alibaruho, a Ugandan and Dr. Gloria Alibaruho of Macon, Georgia on Saturday May 6th, 1972 in Maywood, Illinois. At the age of 2, Kwatsi’s parents filed for divorce, going with his mother who raised him while guiding and supporting her son’s career prospects. Kwatsi had that profound passion for rockets and science fiction media, drawing exposure and inspiration from his parents that forced him to concentrate on mathematics and sciences right from a tender age.Kwatsi spent much of his childhood in Oakland, California and Atlanta, Georgia. Several of his siblings were born in the Uganda.
"I caught the science bug very early from watching science fiction programs, and I wanted to learn about real science," Alibaruho says. Mr. Kwatsi, who is proud to be Ugandan proceeded to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Avionics in 1994 from the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge Massachusetts. He earned the Master of Business Administration from Rice University, via the Rice Executive MBA Program in May 2005, which he worked for full-time while attending to his Flight Directing duties. The 2005 Flight Directing class is the second largest and most diverse ever created, having 9 members, of whom 3 are females and 2 are Hispanics.
Mr. Alibaruho boosts of over 700 hours of training since kick-starting active duty in August 2005 as an International Space Station Flight Director, where crew safety is the first priority. In his own words, Kwatsi Alibaruho says that he is humbled to serve in the flight director’s capacity. Notwithstanding, Kwatsi says that despite his love for science, he never dreamt of himself working for NASA until the golden opportunity surfaced through the cooperative NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston educational program which ushered him into the system. He was only one of the two students that qualified on merit for this internship program with NASA.
NASA has also had a share of tragedies in space expeditions, the worst being the two space orbiters Challenger (1986) and Columbia (2003 which both killed a total of 14 astronauts. However in it’s over half a century history, NASA’s space shuttle program has seen more than 135 successful space missions spanning over a period of 30 years, sending off over 300 astronauts into space. This program closed down on Thursday July 21st, 2011 with the successful landing of the space shuttle Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center.
Kwatsi’s mother is currently a retired social sciences university professor where as his father is also a retired economist living in Kampala, Uganda. The couple was forced to flee for greener pastures from the wacko Idi Amin regime in the 1970s that saw some 500, 000 Ugandans killed in the most gruesome days of Ugandan tumultuous history.
In one of the 2005 issues of the Ebony Magazine, one of the best leading publications among the African-American community in the States ranked him among the most influential black personalities in America.
While at MIT, Kwatsi kicked off as Computer Science freshman, but later dropped it on realizing it was not what he originally wanted, and it is from here that he switched to the School of Avionics and Aerospace engineering.
As an ordained Church Minister, he also gets time to work as the head staffs volunteer at his church where he contributes to Children ministry. When asked the legacy he wants to leave behind as a great son of the African soil, Kwatsi says, “I would rather be remembered as a Christian who loved his country and his family”.
Kwatsi Alibaruho is recipient of the prestigious awards, among them the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal in 2009, and the Royal National Award for Space Achievement Stellar Award.
Kwatsi is happily married for over 15 years now to Macresia Alibaruho, a communications and data systems supervisor in NASA’s flight operations. The couple has a five-year old son Mitchel AlibaruhoAtkunda.
