OWARE AT NAFEST 2017

After several years of being a demonstration game at the Nigerian National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFEST), the board game featured on these  pages and known across Africa and beyond by several names featured at the last edition of the festival as a gong(medal) winning event. Three of the myriad styled of playing the game were featured and while winners ermerged in each style, only the winner based on aggregate scores across the three went home with the gong. The competition was unisex and at the end of the day, the only woman in the competition won the game .

Foreword to the book

A look at the book.

This is the cover of the book I issued in the first year of my now 12yr-old research into the game.

So much more has been learnt about the game that I now consider the book as covering a minute part of the field.

All the same, I intend to reproduce it on these pages over the next few posts.

How it all started.

As said earlier, I had always played Nsa Isong, Ayo ,Okwe or whichever of its numerous names you choose to call it.

Not once did I ever think of it as something worthy of analytical attention.

Then in 1998, I was posted to Uyo as Head of Zone for my office's Zonal Office there that covers Akwa Ibom,Bayelsa,Cross River and Rivers States.( I am an Artiste/Cultural Administrator and work for Nigeria's National Council for Arts and Culture-NCAC)

Soon thereafter, I got invited to the National Commission for Musuems and Monuments Annual Nsa Isong competition for that year.

I sat with someone who wanted to know if the game presented any mental challenge to be worthy of the attention the competition was giving to it.He could be excused; he is an intercontinental cross-breed.

I did not have to think up an answer. A combination of my then 3 decade experience with the game and a tinge of cultural self-defence produced an affirmative answer.

Later on, I wondered what my reaction would have been if my co-discussant had requested proof. It was in order not to be caught napping in the event of a re-enactment of this small scene in its more challenging form that I decided to sit down and explore the internal dynamics of the game.

The work proved much larger than I imagined at the beginning of the exercise but even more so is the thrill.

A GAME WITH MANY NAMES !

A lot of us grew up with this game. At some point in my life, I could not contemplate the idea of an African, Nigerian or Yoruba child growing up without it , but I have recently discovered that there are indeed some members of these societies - some of them older than I am - for whom that game is merely something they know distantly. I sympathise with them !

This game is known by many names across the globe, for it is now known to be played in many other places besides Africa. Sometimes the names are generic - referring to the game itself but some other times, they refer to specific ways of playing the game.

In my immediate society - Yoruba - it is generically known as ayo, a very loose reference actually, because that word is generally used for all forms of games. Style reference wise, we have three names for it : j'odu , j'eyo and j'erin - referring to three different modes of play.

In the last decade, I have done extensive work on the game, especially its j'erin mode.

No, I did not improve it; I merely studied it . Yet, the challenge which studying it has posed has been tremendous albeit fullfilling.

Some of the other names by which the game is known are : okwe,

nsa-isong,mancalla,warri,awele !

A GIFT FROM THE GODS !

"Once upon a very very long time, there was a small boy who had a wicked stepmother. One day, the stepmother beat and drove him out to the outskirts of the village.

While he was there, a good spirit came down from heaven and saw him. Having pity on him, the spirit dug twelve holes in the ground, six on one side and six on the other. He filled the holes with four round seeds each, forty-eight in all. Then he showed the boy how to move the seeds. Without the boy realising it, he had spent the whole day so blissfully that he forgot about his unhappiness and his wicked stepmother. Then it was sundown and the spirit left.

" Left ?"

" Yes, left !"

" Without giving the boy a gift ?"

"Uhn ..!

"I thought it is said that whenever one is lucky enough to meet a good spirit, the spirit was sure to give him a gift !"
"Oh, yes , the spirit left a gift and that gift was the game he was playing with the boy.
Soon the boy was teaching the other children how to play. Even the elderly, the custordians of communal secrets came to him to learn. He had become respected by all. They protected him against his wicked stepmother. They admitted him into their ranks long before his peers and, though he lived long, he was loved by all till his death."