Village Checkers

Oh how we take our education for granted. How we are taught logical deduction and systematic problem solving. We introduce games at a young age that sharpen our reasoning skills. These are skills that the Baka often lack. Yesterday, Nathan cut a piece of plywood into a square because our neighbors had been asking him if they could use some of the wood to create a game that they’ve seen. The board is basically a checkered board…which took them 3 tries to get the pattern correct. A simple checkered pattern…every other, black, white took a great deal of concentration. They cut the game pieces out of 2 different colored bucket lids. The game is similar to our game of checkers, but the board is bigger, there are more pieces and some of the rules are a little different. The pieces are all pawns that can only move diagonally forwards and one “chief” that can move in any direction.

We really enjoyed the crowd of guys that the game drew to our mbanjo (cooking/sitting/gathering shelter) for pretty much the whole day. It was neat that they taught our kids how to play. Boaz, our gamer, really got into it and even won a couple of times against the older Baka boys.

When Sufaio was playing against Boaz, as they were setting up the board he had one extra piece…or so it looked, to Boaz. He had 4 even rows of pawns, then one extra that he placed on the next row. Boaz only had 4 even rows w/o an extra, so he tried to convince Sufaio that the piece didn’t belong. Sufaio argued, counted his pieces, and said that it was correct. So Boaz conceded and they played and Boaz won that game. At the end of each game, the players switch colored pawns, so Boaz now had the set that Sufaio had had. I watched as Boaz set up his side of the board for the next game. When he got his four rows even, and had the extra piece still in his hand, he swiftly chucked it while Sufaio wasn’t looking...and they started playing without Sufaio even noticing. Cracked me up so bad!