Children of Africa

by James B. Baird

A quiet game in contrast to the hand-ball is the native game of draughts in which the opponents “eat” one another to use the native expression. Four rows of little holes are made in a shady place. The opponents sit on opposite sides and each has command of two rows. Sometimes there are six and at other times eight holes in each row. Each player has a number of seeds or little pieces of stone or other small things, about the size of marbles and he places one in each hole leaving a certain one empty. Then begin mysterious movements of taking out and putting in. So it seems to the European at first. But there are rules, and the black boys know them well. The idea is to move one’s own “men” one hole along at a time, until those in any hole surpass in number those in the enemy’s hole opposite when they are taken and placed out of the game. The game is won when one is able to take the last remaining “man” on his opponent’s side. To the boys it is a very engrossing game, and they often forget all about time over it. Sometimes the holes are chiselled out on a board and the game played by the grown-up people on the verandah of their houses.

Quite a different game from any of those described is that played by both boys and girls among the cassava bushes in the gardens. When one finds a single leaf growing in a fork of a bush he calls out to his neighbour, “I have bound you.” The neighbour considers himself bound till he finds a leaf in a similar position, when he calls out, “I have freed myself.” He who first finds the leaf binds the other, and so the game goes on till the children are tired of it. The boys have another use for the cassava leaf. They pluck a nice big one. Then the left hand is closed fist-like, but leaving a hollow in the hand. The leaf is then laid across the hollow, resting on the thumb and the bent fore-finger. The open, right hand is now brought down whack upon the leaf, which is split in two with a loud report.

Hide-and-seek you all know. I think it must be played by children all over the world. It is played by the black children of Africa and enjoyed very much. There are splendid opportunities for hiding in the long grass. You have only to go into it a few feet, and you are completely hidden. Sometimes the black children vary the game from the ordinary hide-and-seek. The seeker will be a wild beast—say a lion—and the hiders will be deer. They go off and hide in the grass and the lion has to find his prey. Sometimes the hider will represent a deer and go and conceal himself, and the seekers will be hunters on the chase. Then if there is water near one will hide in the water and pretend to be a crocodile, and when the others come down to the stream to bathe or draw water the crocodile rushes out on them and tries to seize them by the legs.

The boys also play at war with tiny bows and arrows made of grass stalks. They stand in rows facing one another and try to “kill” one another with their arrows.

There is another good game played by the boys called “nsikwa.” It has no English name or I would have written it instead of the native one. There are sides in this game, but two boys can play it. Of course the fun is better when there are perhaps four or five a side. The boys sit in the courtyard in lines facing one another and about ten feet apart. In front of each player is placed a small piece of maize cob about two or three inches high, from which the grain has been taken. It is then very light and easily overturned. In his right hand each player holds a native top. When all are ready, the players send their tops spinning across the clear space with great force and try to knock down the piece of maize cob belonging to the player opposite. To and fro in the battle are whirled the tops to the accompaniment of shouts and laughter of opponents and onlookers.

Most of the games I have seen are boys’ games, but the girls of Africa can play too like the girls of other lands. But their play mostly consists of trying to do what they see their mothers do. Thus the girls will seize the pestles and try to pound at the mortars. Others will take the winnowing baskets and try if they can do as well as mother in sifting out the hard grains from the fine flour. They also play at keeping house and marriages. They borrow pots and cooking utensils from their mothers and go to the bush and build little houses and make believe to set up house on their own account. If they play this game in the village the girls mark out the walls of the supposed houses with sand, and say, “Here is my hearth, there is my sleeping place, and this is the doorway.” They also make food with mud and invite one another to afternoon mud cakes, and pretending to eat them throw the mud over their shoulders.

When the big people of the village go to work in the gardens the children often go to the bush and build little houses and bring flour and maize and other kinds of food and play at a new village. Then one will be chosen to be a hyena and another will be a cock. The hyena goes off to the grass and hides, and the cock struts about the village. Then someone will call out, “It is night, let us go to sleep.” So they all go to sleep, and in a short time the cock will crow, “Kokoliliko,” which is the black boys’ way of saying “Cock-a-doodle-do.” The hyena will also roar.

Those in the house will awake, and one will say, “It is daybreak,” but others will say, “It is only that foolish cock crowing in the middle of the night.” Then hearing the hyena one will get up, open the door cautiously, and chase the beast away. When the big people go back to the village the children are not long in following them.

Boys and girls also play at funerals. One will pretend to be dead, and the others will gather round in sorrow and mourn over the dead one and lift him up with great ceremony and bear him off for burial. But if I make this chapter any longer I am afraid I may tire you. Let me finish with just one more pastime. Some of the black children play at making little animals out of mud, just as white boys and girls play at mud-pies. The African women do not bake pies, so the children know nothing of the pleasures of mud-pie making. Instead, they make little mud dogs and hens and lions and snakes. These they put out into the sun where they get baked hard. They can then be carried about and played with.

These games are some of the many played by African children, and I hope you will like reading about them. If you could only see the black children play them in this sunny land I am sure you would enjoy it and want to join them. I have watched them often, and as often wished I had a camera to take living pictures of African children at play so that you children at home might be able to see with your own eyes something of what I have but feebly tried to describe to you.